


Take me with you (or let me follow)

by Sunnyrea



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF
Genre: F/M, Gaslighting, Ghosts, Historical, Horror, M/M, Paranormal, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24294292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunnyrea/pseuds/Sunnyrea
Summary: Alexander Hamilton learns of the death of John Laurens on a Thursday.[John Laurens' ghost haunts Alexander Hamilton.]
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/Elizabeth "Eliza" Schuyler, Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens
Comments: 119
Kudos: 184





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have seen variations on this, ghosts and John and after his death. This idea has 'haunted' me for a while and it finally started to fully form itself so I had to write it. I will warn you now, it is going to get rough. [Title from a song by Son Lux]
> 
> I also made a mix while writing this and thought you readers might enjoy it too: [Ghost Laurens](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTTbVdd3h1E87KTepxSq3PE74sANRYm8E)
> 
> **This one is not related to "Duty and Inclination," just a stand alone story**

Alexander Hamilton learns of the death of John Laurens on a Thursday.

Hamilton walks from the Schuyler estate into the early morning bustle of Albany toward his rented office. Having recently passed the bar in July, Hamilton works tirelessly each day to solidify his position as a patriot lawyer. The war may not yet be won but the resolution in favor of the American cause is all but decided. Any Tory lawyers left within the city should soon see their list of clients diminishing and Hamilton intends to catch them with open arms. Come November, he will join Congress as a newly appointed delegate from New York, but Hamilton wants his law practice well established ahead of such departure and ready to return to.

Hamilton clutches his portfolio and a copy of Blackstone’s ‘Commentaries’ borrowed from his friend James Duane as he walks along the dusty street. He thinks he should return the book today having had it near a month, but one more case on property disputes bears adding to his own workbook of essential law. He wonders if Laurens will return to the law after the army. Perhaps Hamilton could persuade him toward a New York practice instead of remaining in Charles Town.

“Good morning, Hamilton.”

Hamilton turns his head as he passes the Alchemist shop to spy Aaron Burr as he comes into step beside him. “Burr.”

“I must say, I find it a wonder that you bother with your office.”

Hamilton chuckles. “And where should I put my practice if not an office, Burr, a boat upon the Hudson?”

“Why, I could well imagine you as Captain of a ship, Hamilton. With hair as red as yours, it would be the prefect beacon to command the attention of your crew no matter the weather or your place upon the deck.”

“I prefer my feet on dry land and within my office that you so decry.”

“I do not decry an office, as I have one myself.” Burr shifts the portamento he carries, the newspaper trapped between Burr’s arm and midsection sliding precariously. “Only in that your residence being the Schuyler mansion, I would think that a far grander option for the receiving of business.”

Hamilton scoffs as they finally turn down the wide expanse of State Street where they both practice. Dust rises from a horse trotting by them on the busy street and Hamilton brushes a line off his gray coat. “One must differentiate between the home and their work.”

“Really? Most men with mansions are keen to have such business come to them and their grand parlor rather than the other way round.”

“Ah, but it is not my own mansion, is it, Burr?”

Burr smirks and looks forward as they walk. “It is your family’s and you live there just as wholly.”

“Yes, and General Schuyler has business of his own, my wife and his both with guests to entertain. Where do you suppose I should preform my practice, beneath my father-in-law’s boots or my wife’s tea table?”

Burr laughs in the back of his throat. “Oh, I think there is the garden, a pretty bit of hedgerows in the back or perhaps the children’s room? You could begin your son at his education early, have him fetch any book or paper you might need with one hand as he plays with his ball in the other?” Burr frowns and looks at Hamilton again. “Does he walk yet? I confess I do not recall, does the walking come first or the legal transcription?”

“You are in quite a cheerful mood, have I missed word of peace declared?”

“No indeed, can a man not be pleasant on a fine morning, unless you see something within I do not?” Burr pulls his newspaper out from under his arm and holds it out for Hamilton. “Should you not expect your former commander to write you personally of such a thing, were it so?” Burr wheedles.

Hamilton taps Burr’s arm good naturedly with his portfolio then takes the newspaper. “I left General Washington’s service at Yorktown, Burr. I cannot expect myself to be first among his correspondence in military matters.”

“Ah yes, but you and I both have friends in the army to hope for word before the newspaper.” Burr brushes his hand over the paper as Hamilton unfurls it one-handed. “There is news enough of general skirmishes in the southern quarter still. I expect them to continue up until the moment the ink dries upon a peace treaty.”

“Yes,” Hamilton says with a frown. He thinks of Laurens whom he wrote to some weeks past, urging him to finally give up the fight and choose congress instead to quench his fire. “The south has cause for such strife with at least two of their major cities still under British control.”

Burr waves to a passing carriage out of the corner of Hamilton’s eye. “They are but prideful holds since the British have lost so much more. It makes me weary to think upon when I should prefer a return to normality.”

“Normality is no longer normal, Burr, as we shall soon be rulers of our own na…” Hamilton trails off as a familiar word on the printed page before him catches his eyes.

He reads no particular article, only skimming to notice recent imports or any action by the State legislature on the issue of collecting taxes. However, a different word catches his attention entirely out of the realm of his new domestic life here in Albany – no, not a word, a name; a name he has just been thinking of, a name from that very military realm on which he and Burr speak; a name he holds very dear, as dear as his son’s, as dear as his wife’s.

Hamilton reads: 

__

> _John Laurens, aide-de-camp to His Excellency General George Washington and son of Henry Laurens, surrendered his life to the cause of liberty in a skirmish along the Combahee River of South Carolina on the 27th of this month. Lieutenant Colonel Laurens dies a brave –_

Hamilton stops reading.

Hamilton hears his own breath rushing loud in his ears, faster, shriller so he hears nothing else. 

It sounds as loud as waves upon the Hudson during a storm; it sounds like hurricane winds outside a barricaded door; it sounds like cannon fire, like musket shots, like screaming – 

He has difficulty swallowing. He tastes dust from the road – or the field or... 

He feels dirt coating his tongue as though he falls face first into the mud. He tries to close his mouth, to swallow that taste away, the taste of damp earth, of soil slick with moisture, with something more than water. 

Hamilton breathes in deeper – he tries to breathe but he cannot breathe deep enough – his tongue feels too thick, too heavy with wet, bloody earth and the rush in his ears screams louder, such a pitch that Hamilton thinks he must stop breathing, must choke on the blood in his mouth to make the noise, the screaming, end. 

Oh, dear God, please make this feeling end.

“Hamilton!” Hamilton blinks hard and stares down at the book held out in Burr’s hand. “Is the news so diverting I must say your name three times?”

“My name?” Hamilton whispers.

“Your book,” Burr says as if correcting a student. “It dropped from your hand. Did you not see?”

Hamilton takes the book with the hand holding his portfolio. “No.”

“’No,’ he says.” Burr makes a gruff noise. “I suppose you compose another essay upon taxes in your mind and entirely forget me. Hamilton, I think you too –”

“My apologies, Burr,” Hamilton interrupts. “You are quite right; I must leave you now.”

“I did not say –”

“I am late to my own business.”

“Late?”

“Thank you, Burr.” Hamilton clutches the newspaper tight in his hand and weaves around Burr. “Good day.”

Behind him, Burr scoffs a laugh and says something about tea with his new wife, but Hamilton walks on without looking back. He strides purposefully down the cobblestones past blurred yellow and brown wood, past doors with words he little marks. His fixes his eyes on the building with his name upon the door until he reaches the stoop. He grapples for the key within the pocket of his coat without letting go of the newspaper. The paper crumples as he forces a corner of it into his pocket enough so Hamilton might finally pull out the key. Then he scrapes it into the lock and shoves the door open. He turns in place, locks the door behind him then drops the key upon the wood floor.

Hamilton turns into the one large room on the first floor and places the portfolio and book upon the desk. He trods upon letters on the floor in the hall, likely left by the early post. Then he turns to the narrow stairs and walks up with the newspaper folded between both hands. On the second floor he turns into his work room, one desk beside the window, a small circular table with a cup still upon it and a bookshelf against the interior wall holding all his workbooks and texts on law. 

Hamilton stands in front of the window. The sunlight hits Hamilton in the chest. If he turns his head to the right the angle of light reflecting off the streetlamp outside blinds him.

Hamilton breathes out slowly then opens the newspaper in his hands. He reads from the very beginning of the article detailing the death of Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens until the very end.

“August 27th…” Hamilton says aloud, a week and a half past now.

Hamilton reaches for his desk but stops when he realizes his copy of the letter he wrote Laurens some weeks ago would not be in this desk. It would in the desk in his bedchamber at the Schuyler mansion.

He breathes through his nose attempting to count days in his head. 

“On the 27th I wrote to Meade,” Hamilton mutters. 

He wrote Richard Kidder Meade of his son Philip, gave his love to Meade’s wife – a happy letter, an ignorant letter when Laurens was bleeding, dying.

Hamilton sucks in another breath and reflexively reaches out to brace his hand on the windowpane.

“The 27th… the 27th… before that I wrote. I wrote on the… I wrote….” Hamilton breathes in deeper through his mouth. He shuts it and breathes through his nose again. “I wrote on the… 15th,” Hamilton says louder. “I wrote Laurens on the 15th.”

Twelve days. Twelve days lie between the day Hamilton last wrote Laurens and the day he died. Hamilton thinks of letters sent in the past, the distance between New York and South Carolina, the difficulty of letters finding a man over moving military engagements. Twelve days could be just enough time for a letter to find its source in good weather, with a strong horse, in peace time, even with August heat and hundreds of miles it might not be impossible.

Hamilton knows though, he simply knows as a twisting knot in his gut. “Laurens never received my letter.” 

Hamilton’s knees stab with pain before Hamilton realizes he falls. He palms scrape hard on the wood floor as he retches violently. He thanks something unnamed in the back of mind that he chose only coffee for his breakfast before leaving the house as he retches again. Hamilton then shoves himself up onto his knees. The momentum sends him falling backward until his spine knocks against the edge of the door frame.

Hamilton breathes hard, the foul taste in his mouth and the newspaper still clenched in one hand. He cannot slow his breathing, does not try to any longer, as his hands shake.

“He didn’t…” Hamilton whispers. “He didn’t…” 

Laurens did not receive Hamilton’s last letter, he did not read Hamilton’s request for Laurens to come to Congress – an obvious desire to protect Laurens from the fight, to keep him near; he did not read Hamilton’s honorific of ‘dear’ upon him – a word like darling, like mine; he did not read ‘Yours forever’ – as good as, better even, than love. Laurens died without Hamilton’s words to comfort him – without Hamilton’s hand in his, without Hamilton near at his side. Laurens died. Laurens is dead and Hamilton will never see him again in this long life. 

“Oh, John…” Hamilton whispers, almost a moan. “John… John…”

Hamilton drops the newspaper, presses shaking hands against his face, and cannot stand again for hours.

Hamilton first hears it a week later.

“We do not know how long his father might yet be in Paris,” Betsy says. “Should we not write him there of our condolences?”

Hamilton stares at the candle on his desk. The flame burns almost impossibly still, no breeze from the cracked window or even Hamilton’s breath to move it.

“Or perhaps it should be better to write to his sister?” Betsy asks. “She is yet in South Carolina, is she not?”

“I do not know,” Hamilton says as he stares still at the candle.

“What of his widow?” Betsy asks again. Hamilton hears her close the doors of their wardrobe. “She is yet in England?”

“She died a year past,” Hamilton answers flatly.

“Yes, my apologies, I knew this.” Betsy sighs. “It is terrible to think of their child, to lose both parents so near and she so young. Perhaps we might write them all.”

“I cannot.” Hamilton sits back in his chair, the candle flame as still as before even with his movement. “There is naught we might say to alleviate any of their woes. We cannot bring him back despite any pains felt and words with not change this.”

“Alexander…”

Hamilton breathes in deeply and holds it, feels the pressure rise in his chest. He wonders how Laurens died, the article gave no such detail other than the skirmish itself and Laurens’ fall at near the beginning. Was his throat slashed by a dull blade? Was his same arm in which he was wounded at least three times shot again? Did some savage redcoat knock Laurens from his horse and choke the life out of him over taught, painful seconds? 

“Alexander, I know you…”

Hamilton breathes out harshly down against his chest. “My apologies, Eliza, it is a loss still so near I think myself unable to console another.”

“He was a dear friend and too young yet to leave this life.” Betsy’s hand slides over Hamilton’s shoulder, her thumb brushing at the base of his hair. “Find comfort in that he has gone to his reward.”

Hamilton shuts his eyes – thinks of Laurens’ hand where Betsy’s lies, his lips pressed firm over Hamilton’s, a whispered word Hamilton cannot remember. “I will,” Hamilton says aloud.

Betsy’s hand falls away. “Come to bed, Alex.” He hears her footsteps, the swish of her banya, as she walks to the bedroom door. “I will bring Philip from the nurse.”

Hamilton rubs a hand over his eyes as Betsy leaves the room. He thinks sleep may elude him for some hours yet. He could try to begin work on his tax plan. It will be only two months before he leaves for his new position with Congress in Philadelphia. Before then, he promised Robert Morris to help lobby the New York legislature about stronger laws in regards to debts and taxation. Perhaps such work will be enough to distract Hamilton from his thoughts, from the memories, from the carved-out hole in his heart.

Hamilton drops his hand and opens the desk drawer. He pulls out fresh paper and quill. He rubs his finger over the tip. “Dull.”

He reaches to one of the drawers in front of him for a pen knife, glancing at the candle. The flame remains still. He thinks oddly as if it might be frozen, a testament to another fire – a passionate, dutiful fiery heart gone out.

Then Hamilton hears a sigh beside his ear. 

Hamilton jerks sharply around, his pulse spiking. His eyes sweep around the room, left then right twice over. The room remains empty but for himself. He stands up quickly and shuts the window. Then he turns around and looks at the room again. He hears the distant sound of Betsy’s voice as she speaks to baby Philip.

Hamilton holds his breath trying to hear the sigh again – not the wind or some other creak of the house. It was distinct, entirely human and particular. When one knows another person – works, fights, sleeps close beside them – every sound they make, a laugh, a turn of phrase or a foot upon the ground becomes recognizable. Hamilton could tell you when he hears Betsy’s footsteps on the stair with certainty every time.

The sigh he heard sounded exactly like Laurens.

Hamilton stares at the room, nothing there but the usual furniture, his marriage bed, bay cradle, the desk he stood from, the red patterned wallpaper.

“It is but your grief,” Hamilton forces himself to admit aloud. “Nothing more.”

He turns back toward the desk to pick up his quill. On the center of the desk, the candle flame flickers gently from side to side.

Hamilton and Eliza sit in the front parlor after supper. General Schuyler talks in the hall with one of the kitchen servants.

“And salted pork, we need more adequate stores for the winter.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mrs. Schuyler wishes for the plates, the English set to be…” General Schuyler’s voice begins to fade as his footsteps move away down the hall.

“He calls it the English set as if it has not been in this house some twenty years,” Eliza says quietly into her needle point.

She and Hamilton laugh once together, looking up at each other over the small tea table between them. She purses her lips at him, and he raises his eyebrows back, cheered for a brief respite by her dark eyes. Then they both turn back to their pursuits. 

Hamilton attempts to read the book in his hand but finds he has reread the same page thrice over without recalling near a word. His mind will not settle upon the distraction, instead attempting to bring up memories Hamilton cannot bear to recall now – not with his wife near, not with no one to tell, not when he mourns alone.

“Mrs. Burr plans to call tomorrow,” Eliza says as she pushes a needle into the fabric circle in her hands. “For tea, if you have no case to keep you in your office?”

Hamilton clears his throat, focusing on the face of his wife, then shakes his head. “No, I have less now before me and Congress more pressing.”

Her eyes peek up from her work. “You do not serve yet.”

“Soon.”

“More woeful to me when you do.”

Hamilton smiles fondly. “Do not think I will not miss you as ardently as you foresee you shall miss me.”

“But I shall have the comfort of our son and this house. You will only have the comfort of your fellow politicians which cannot be called so much a comfort.”

“It is my duty and I shall bear it by the knowledge of all I do for our country.”

Eliza nods. “As dutifully as you served upon the field of battle, I know you will also on the floor of Congress. At least there I need fear far less for your life.”

Hamilton struggles to swallow, his mouth suddenly dry. He wants to tell her; he wants to try and explain how he knew those fears too – how his fear came true.

A playful noise comes from what sounds like the stairs. Eliza sighs and puts her needle work aside on the table. “He should be abed. Did the nurse… Molly?” She stands up and walks through the parlor door. “Molly, where is Philip? I heard…” The red flowers of her skirt disappear around the corner down the hall.

_‘Alex.’_

Hamilton turns his head at the sound of his name and stares toward Eliza’s vacant chair. He glances back to the parlor exit knowing Eliza walked out, knowing the voice was not hers. He stands up abruptly, yanks off his glasses and strides to the window, as though someone could be playing a jest upon him. He looks out the window toward the road in front of the house. Outside the road appears dark, a few lights in the distance nearer the Hudson. No person hides behind a bush or runs away toward the road.

“Nothing…” Hamilton whispers to himself.

He turns back around and glances toward the parlor door again. He turns his glasses around two time in his hands then shakes his head. 

“No,” Hamilton says aloud again. “It is but memory or imagination.”

He knows whose voice he thought he heard, what voice he wants to hear again. Hamilton grits his teeth then moves back to his chair. When he picks up the book the pages have flipped ahead. The first word on the new page is ‘listen.’

The sun dips low outside Hamilton’s office window where he still sits at his desk. He knows he should retire for the evening and return to Schuyler mansion. However, he wants to finish the draft of resolutions for the legislature to grant the government more taxing power. Presently the states pay their debts to the central government on a more voluntary basis and often not in full.

“Surely our revolution has shown the need for unity,” Hamilton grumbles to himself. “Such unity maintained by a federal government but such with no money…” He sighs to himself and dips his quill in the ink. “Such ineptitude…”

Hamilton squints at the page, the light fading fast. During long nights over winter encampments when Hamilton would stay at his writing desk, candle near burnt out, Laurens would say, ‘Come sleep.’ Laurens would write beside him, ideas as progressive as Hamilton’s own and Laurens would say, ‘Sleep, my dear.’

Hamilton pulls his glasses from his face, blowing out a breath. He shakes his head then stretches his arms up toward the ceiling. A drop of ink from the quill in his hand falls on his cheek.

“Ahh.” Hamilton sits up straight and wipes at the ink. “Blast.”

He puts his glasses down on the desk and the quill into the stand. Then he rises from his chair, keeping his inky hand clear of his pale striped waistcoat, and turns to the circular table where he thinks he left a handkerchief. The table only holds a brief from his last case on a dispute over a property line.

_‘Hamilton…’_

Hamilton twists around to stare at the doorway to his office. 

He cannot stop himself from calling, “Hello?” He knows no one else remains in the building but himself. 

Hamilton huffs. “Stop it.” He shakes his head and shuts his eyes. “You didn’t hear…”

_‘Alex…’_

Hamilton’s eyes shoot open as he gasps. He turns all the way around, trying to see every corner of his small office. The sun barely shines now, almost completely set. Hamilton stumbles back toward his desk, grabbing a candle and tinder box with shaking hands.

“No… it’s not…” He breathes in deeply through his nose, nearly dropping the candle.

When he finally lights the wick and the soft light illuminates the room, he waves it to and fro, almost putting the flame out again with the force of his arm. He will not allow his thoughts to run away with him, will not succumb to the pull in his chest. But he knew that voice, he knows that voice so well. He misses that voice so much.

Hamilton stops waving the candle. He stands still within the small pool of light circled around him. He sees nothing, no one else in the room but him. 

When he turns back to the desk, he spies his handkerchief folded into a perfect square resting beneath his glasses.

Hamilton crouches in his bedchamber with Philip seated on the floor in front of him. Philip holds a block in his fist knocking it steadily against a matching block on the floor.

“A man might try to place the block instead of causing such noise,” Hamilton says as he attempts to take the block from Philip.

Philip laughs and tugs it back as Hamilton’s fingers close around it. Hamilton reaches out to take it again and Philip laughs more when he tugs it back a second time.

“Ah, is this our game now? And here I thought to teach you the basics of construction.” He taps his finger on the block upon the floor. “Place it here.”

Philip taps the two blocks together several times, laughing at the noise he makes.

“But then leave it.” Hamilton picks up two blocks from the larger pile beside the two of them. He puts one block near Philip’s foot deliberately as the baby watches then places the second block atop the first. “Like so.” He gestures to Philip’s block. “Now you, sir.”

Philip smacks his two blocks together like the staccato of a military drum, a rat-a-tat-tat for soldiers marching in a line.

Hamilton swallows a lump in his throat then rubs a hand over Philip’s fuzzy head. He glances toward the cracked door, forces his breath slow. “It is a wonder I try, clearly this is not a task for men when one’s son is so young yet.” 

He turns back to Philip, beginning to smile, then freezes with the expression half formed. 

Philip sits the same as before with his precious block still clasped within his small hand. However, atop the block on the floor which Philip used as his drum rests a second block. Hamilton’s eyes shift to the tower he made himself which now boasts only one block instead of two. Hamilton’s eyes slide back and forth between the changed blocks.

“Philip?” He asks as though the baby could answer yet.

Philip stares at the blocks with Hamilton. Hamilton waits, he could not say for what. Then suddenly Philip laughs loud and shrill, slamming his block down on top of the taller stack. The new block clatters to the floor and the block in Philip’s hand falls with it. 

Hamilton sucks in a sharp breath and picks Philip up. He quickly puts Philip down into his cradle then gathers up all the blocks, thrusts them back into the toy chest and drops the lid shut.

“My apologies,” Hamilton calls down the stairs. “I have kept it months past when I should have returned it!”

“Of all who might borrow my books, I know you to be among those I least fear of harming them,” Duane replies from the meeting parlor below.

Hamilton pushes papers aside on his desk, a few dropping to the floor. “That does not allow me to take near possession of them through inattention.”

Hamilton hears Duane chuckle. “I only feel the need to retrieve it now as we have but weeks left before you leave south and how might I regain it then? Or might I fear you whisk it to Philadelphia with you?”

Hamilton smiles to himself as he turns toward the bookshelf, rolling up his shirt sleeves. He did not think he would have put the book away, it not being his, but that might have escaped his notice in an alternate attempt at organization. He pulls at the books on his shelves checking titles. He glances over his shoulder, hoping maybe it lies in a window bay he overlooked.

“Hamilton?”

“But a moment,” Hamilton calls again. 

He sighs and turns back to his desk to find his glasses. He may as well attempt to read the titles properly rather than riffing through hoping for some miracle of cover recognition. 

He remembers the office at Valley Forge, Hamilton asking Laurens for a book from the highest shelf only to be able to watch Laurens stand from the desk and see the curve of Laurens’ calf, the pull of his breeches as he reached high, coat abandoned on his chair. Hamilton closes his eyes and leans both hands on his desk. He sees Laurens turn in his mind, book in hand, smile upon his face, ‘I think perhaps you do not even need this book?’

Something suddenly slams onto the floor behind Hamilton. Hamilton starts, eyes snapping open, and spins around. He half expects to see Duane standing in the doorway or maybe the chair fallen over beside him.

“Do you tear your whole office apart?” Duane calls from below.

Hamilton crosses the office slowly. Opposite the circular table at the base of the bookshelf lies a leather-bound book. Hamilton glances up and sees the space where the book must have fallen from, the other books on either side still standing upright. He reaches down and picks up the book. He holds it up in front of the space, just wide enough for the book to fit, not an inch of wiggle room. 

Hamilton turns up the edge of the book toward himself. The spine reads, ‘Commentaries.’

“Hamilton? Do you require assistance?”

“I found it,” Hamilton calls back, his voice hoarse.

Hamilton walks down the stairs with the book in hand. He holds it out to Duane standing in the hall. 

Duane grins wide as he takes the book. “Ah ha, as resplendent as the day I lent it.”

Hamilton clears his throat and merely nods.

“I thank you,” Duane says. He starts to turn toward the door when he stops. He thumbs open the cover with a quizzical look. “I think you do not mean to give me this?”

“This?”

Duane pulls out what appears to be a letter from between the cover and the first page. “It is not my name upon the direction.”

Hamilton recognizes the letter before he completely turns it over to read his name upon the face. He stares at the handwriting, as familiar as his own.

“Thank you for the book,” Duane continues when Hamilton says nothing. “I shall leave you to your letter. Good day.”

Hamilton manages to mutter, “Good day,” though his eyes do not leave the letter. It is the last letter Laurens ever wrote to him.

Hamilton turns the paper over and unfolds the letter he has read before, a letter only months old. He reads the final line, ‘You know the unalterable sentiments of your affectionate Laurens.’ He bites the edge of his lip. His hands start to shake. Hamilton folds up the letter sharply and he presses it tight between his palms. He holds his hands up against his lip, just the edge of the paper like a knife against his skin.

The last time Hamilton reread this letter he placed it into a box of correspondence inside his army trunk up in the attic of the Schuyler mansion.

Hamilton wakes suddenly with the feeling of fingertips upon his cheek. He breathes in deeply and tries to allow his eyes to adjust to the dark. Through the sluggishness of his senses, Hamilton knows it must still be the far early hours of the morning, perhaps one or two AM. He turns to Betsy still breathing deep with sleep beside him. He cannot see either of her hands, one beneath her pillow and the other under their blankets.

Hamilton sits up slowly, trying to look around the room. He looks to Philip’s cradle, but the baby does not move either. He maddeningly wants to say ‘hello’ to the darkness, ask ‘who’s there.’ 

He slides a hand up over his cheek. The feeling still lingers and Hamilton wonders if perhaps he touched his own cheek in his sleep and that could be the cause? He knows this to be false because he recognized the touch. He would know those hands anywhere, any time of day, even in the deep of sleep. Those hands awoke him many times before with the lightest brush or an eager grip – not the same as Betsy who strokes with two fingers and kisses his forehead. Those hands were a thumb along his jaw line, nails tracing the line of his hair, brushing against his eyelids, a fingertip pressed against his lips until Hamilton kissed it.

Hamilton pushes the covers back and walks quietly over the carpet in only his night shirt. He walks to the desk and runs his hand over the back of the chair. He sees well enough now, his vision adjusted to the darkness. Nothing appears out of place.

_‘Alex.’_

Hamilton sucks in a breath. He looks back and forth around the room, his wife and son still sleeping on.

_‘Alexander.’_

Hamilton shuts his eyes and firsts his hand around the back of the chair. He wants to ask, he wants to know, he wants so very much for the voice to be real and he cannot decide if the desire lies in sorrow or terror.

Hamilton opens his eyes again to the dark room and asks, “John?”

Hamilton waits, senses the minutes tick by in the darkness but Hamilton does not hear his name again.

In the rear garden of the Schuyler mansion, Hamilton and Eliza walk side by side. Inside the rest of the family eats supper in the parlor. The two of them begged a few more minutes to their walk before joining the rest of the family.

“The issue is not taxes alone, which you well know my views upon now,” Hamilton says as they walk between the hedge rows.

Eliza’s fingers play over Hamilton’s knuckles. “Indeed, I do.”

“It is the entirety of the articles of confederation. It did not serve well enough at the height of the revolution and it does less now.” Hamilton flicks one of the hedges with his free hand.

Eliza chuckles as Hamilton presses on. “We cannot expect to become a nation of merit or even proper function without a reconstruction of…”

Hamilton stops speaking abruptly and pauses their steps. Hamilton heard the clink of metal, like buttons of a coat tapping together. He looks down at his coat, all his buttons deep blue fabric covered to match his coat.

“Alexander?”

Hamilton does not answer Eliza. He listens to the wind blowing toward them off the Hudson. He hears the creak of the wood of ships on the water, so distant as to be near lost in the sound of the wind itself. 

“Alexander, what is it?”

“I heard…”

Hamilton turns his face into the wind, smells the water even at their distance. A horse whinnies from somewhere out in the dark of the evening. Hamilton cannot say if the horse should be but one stabled on the mansion grounds or a horse from years past, a horse with a tall man astride and a sword in his hand. Hamilton hears the swish of moving air – not the gentle flow of wind but a cutting sound so the fear of attack climbs instinctively up his spine. He hears metal in the sound, the slink of a sword from a scabbard.

“Did you hear that?” Hamilton whispers.

“The wind?” Eliza asks.

Hamilton presses his lips together as the wind blows again like fingers through his hair – like a touch.

“Elizabeth! Hamilton!” The pair of them turn sharply toward the house where Eliza’s mother stands framed by light in the back doorway. “I must insist.”

“Yes, mother.” Eliza squeezes Hamilton’s hand. “Come along, Alexander, we must eat supper now and leave your wind where it blows.” She smiles cheekily. “The wind may not keep you, as you are my husband.”

Eliza turns, her cape sweeping across his hip with no sound – no metal, and she walks toward the house. Hamilton listens to her footsteps as she walks. He hears boots walking with her. The boots fall over pebbles and leaves, the crunch of autumn beneath them, closer, beside him. Hamilton cannot look down to see if the ground at his feet matches the sound. Each step sounds louder as it moves toward him, away from her, around him, heavier – distinct from her delicate heel. 

“I hear you,” Hamilton gasps despite himself because he cannot hear it, the sound cannot be real. He stands still and no one else walks the garden with them. “Please… Jack?”

A voice whispers back, just as Laurens would sometimes call him – written over distance in a letter, found miraculously safe on the battlefield, or quiet in their too narrow bed, _‘My boy.’_

The night before Hamilton leaves Albany to ride for Philadelphia and Congress he finally sees Laurens.

Hamilton rifles through his army trunk, picking out old correspondence which may be of use. He has many a letter to past representatives of congress on both army and personal business. Some might find use as reminders of past promises or actions. When Hamilton served as an aide-de-camp their office often needed to reference old letters or orders, the same may become true with Congress. Hamilton would rather prepare himself with any asset available for his first term.

“I have criticized them enough,” Hamilton mutters to himself. “Better to have all tools available.”

He pulls out a box of personal correspondence. He flips through the letters, many from Meade, some from Lafayette. Then he pulls out the stack tied with a ribbon. Why he decided to do so remains unclear even to Hamilton himself – proof of them all kept together, none found where they should not be, perhaps. Hamilton traces the edges of the letters encompassing five years and less time.

Hamilton sighs. “I would not leave you.”

He stands up and adds the tied letters to his crate of other correspondence and supplies for the journey. He carries the crate to the ladder and awkwardly manages both himself and the crate back down to the floor below. Climbing the ladder once more to close the ceiling hatch, Hamilton then places the ladder down against the wall in the storeroom. He picks up his crate and walks back out into the hall.

Further away, Hamilton hears the sounds of General and Mrs. Schuyler talking in their room, though he cannot tell any particular words. He also hears Philip’s laughter and Betsy cooing to him. Hamilton smiles fondly, already feeling a pang of loss at leaving the two of them here when he makes for Pennsylvania.

Hamilton turns away and carries the crate to the stairs. He walks down to the first floor and places the crate at the base of the stairs. He stands up straight again then abruptly grips the end of the banister.

John Laurens stands near the parlor door. He wears his uniform and baldric, his sword sheathed at his hip. A tear mars the top of his right lapel and nearly all of the cloth looks dirty, the white of his breeches dulled and smears of mud on his coat where he must have fallen. His skin appears ashen, a smear of gray gun powder or dirt over his cheek made by fingers. Strands of his hair fly free from his queue, visible as he wears no hat, giving his entire demeanor a wild appearance as if he stands upon a battlefield and not the hall of a house far north. 

“Laurens,” Hamilton says so quietly he hardly hears himself.

Laurens turns his head, however, at the sound, the movement less like a person and more like a cloud, wisps of Laurens following slower than other portions. Hamilton realizes he can see through Laurens to the wall behind him.

“Oh lord, John,” Hamilton gasps again because now he notices the bright red, almost black blood covering the middle of Laurens’ waistcoat directly over his heart.

Laurens’ eyes take several seconds to focus, to center on Hamilton’s. They do not look like the same shade of blue as before he died.

When he says Hamilton’s name his lips do not move and his voice sounds like a sigh from far away, _‘Alexander.’_

A shudder runs through Hamilton’s whole body. He slides down the banister, unable to let go, until he hits the bottom step gasping and staring at the empty hall.


	2. Chapter 2

“The bed is done, sir.” Hamilton looks up at the man standing in his parlor door with a bag in one hand and a small wrench in the other. “Pieces all fit, ropes tight, all set but the sheets and hangings, sir.”

Hamilton nods as he takes a workbook from the crate before him. “Thank you, and the cabinet?”

The man nods. “My boy Jake will be along about it tomorrow, sir. We need to finish fitting the hinges.”

“I see, thank you.”

The man nods with a clumsy sort of bow and turns down the hall toward the rear door to show himself out. Hamilton listens until he hears the door open then close with the departure of the carpenter. He blows out a breath then turns his head to gaze out of the window nearest him along the front of the house.

Hamilton now rents a narrow house on Market Street only a street away from the Pennsylvania state house where Congress meets. The house reminds him much of his law office in Albany and very little of the only other house in Philadelphia which he inhabited during the war, that of Henry Laurens. Though Hamilton now has the Schuyler family money to benefit his situation, Hamilton felt no need to take a wide lavish house of the Henry Laurens style when only one man alone serving his country should live within.

“Laurens…” Hamilton mutters aloud. “A father to outlive a son…”

Hamilton grits his teeth then pulls the large stack of books still within the crate out onto the table. He picks up the flimsy crate, puts it on the floor, and kicks it toward the parlor door. It scrapes across the wood floor and knocks lightly into the door frame.

“Sir?” Hamilton looks up again at a new face in his parlor door. “The sideboard?”

“Ah yes.” Hamilton gestures to the wall perpendicular to the front of the house. “Against the wall.”

The man nods, knocking the crate as he comes in carrying one end of the sideboard, another man holding the opposite end. Hamilton shifts around the table to allow the workmen room. They carry the sideboard past him and around the table without bumping it. One of the men is black and the other white. They wear opposite colored shirts and waistcoat, the darker man’s both a dull cream and the white man’s oak brown. Hamilton thinks of the cream of Laurens’ uniform waistcoat and breeches, not so pristine as this man’s now but deep within the earth, spoiled and decaying.

Hamilton twists around and marches out of the parlor.

He hears one man say, “And the chairs, we have… blast, where did…”

“He just walked out.”

“Thanks, Joseph.”

“Don’t be short with me, you asked.”

“We need to know where to…”

Their voices fade away as Hamilton climbs the stairs to the upper level of the house. Below lie the formal areas of his house, the parlor for guests and meals along with a study for his work. Above stairs lie two bedrooms. 

Hamilton stands in the door to the second bedroom. He cannot decide yet what to do with it while he remains in Philadelphia alone. Presently the room holds but three trunks and some crates from his move. Hamilton steps into the room and closes the door behind himself to drown out the sounds of the men working below. He kneels down beside one trunk, careful to cause no upset to his pale breeches or stockings. Hamilton lifts the lid of the trunk to see stacks of papers, ink and quill boxes within. The whole trunk likely would make more sense down in the study but Hamilton knows most of the contents to be personal not congressional. 

Hamilton shifts one pile and picks out a stack of letters. The ribbon shifted some in transit so the corners of one letter in the middle point out against the others. Hamilton pulls at the ribbon so he may remove the askew letter from the others. He puts the stack down then opens the letter.

_– how many violent struggles I have had between duty and inclination—how much my heart was with you –_

Hamilton folds the letter closed again without reading more. He remembers when Laurens left the first time for the southern campaign – Savannah captured and Charleston in danger. He sat tall on his horse no longer wearing his green aide-de-camp riband. When he looked down at Hamilton, standing in farewell with their fellow officers, his lips said ‘goodbye’ and his eyes added ‘my dear.’

“Laurens…” Hamilton whispers to himself. He looks up at the bare room, only the interior door behind him and a window to his right. “Laurens?” he repeats stronger this time.

He rises from his crouch, wincing at the cracking sound of his knees. 

“Laurens?” Hamilton asks again, rubbing the soft paper of the letter between his thumb and fore finger. “Are you…” Hamilton sighs then shakes his head. “I am foolish. Why should…”

Then he pulls his head up. “Laurens, are you here?”

He wonders if there is something else he should do. How does one speak to a spirit? How does one call for a friend – not a friend, so much more – when they are gone but not? 

Hamilton smiles wryly to himself. “Need I light candles? Something more formal?” He sniffs hard and breathes in deeply. “I simply want… I want…” He turns in a slow circle. “I saw you there in Albany; I heard you. A place you have never been, but you have been in Philadelphia. We were here together. Not this house but… but is it not enough? Is it me?” Hamilton’s hand tightens around the letter. “What do I need to do to see you, John?”

Hamilton waits, watching the change of the light outside his window, the sun beginning to set. He hears nothing but the sounds of footsteps from the workmen below. Hamilton grits his teeth again, his hand beginning to fist around the paper. “Please, John. Do you punish me even in your death, to show yourself to me and then abandon me again?”

He looks down at the trunk and the stack of letters from Laurens atop all the others. He imagines what Laurens would say, an argument they fought several times over with more than a year and Hamilton’s marriage past.

“I love you as much as her,” Hamilton insists as though it could matter now. “You know that, you knew that but it’s not… why else would you appear if you had not still… I know you did, John, please. It has been more than a week since I left Albany, since I saw… Laurens? Answer me. Laurens, are you… Answer me!”

His hand spasms as a corner of the letter he holds stabs unexpectedly into the crook between two fingers. He looks down at his hand and sees how the letter begins to crumple into a ball. “No, oh, no…. no…”

Hamilton pulls it up quickly between both his hands smoothing out the wrinkles he made, folding it back into shape despite how his hands shake. He crouches and places the letter back atop the others, untrusting of his hands to return them into proper order now. Then he stands up once more.

“John, I simply… if you would tell me…” He blows out a breath. “Did you follow me here?”

A percussive knock suddenly raps upon the door making Hamilton’s shoulder tense up toward his ears. 

“Sir?” One of the workmen on the other side asks.

“Yes?”

The man opens the door and pokes his head in. “We have brought in the last of the furniture.”

Hamilton merely nods.

“Two chairs in the parlor, desk in the study now, and, uh, the chair there.”

“Yes,” Hamilton says gruffly. “I believe you.”

“Were you saying something as I come by, sir?” The man cocks his heard. “Thought I heard you talking.”

Hamilton breathes in and looks away. “Only to ghosts.”

“That an Irish custom, sir?” Hamilton’s eyes tick back to the man. The laborer points at Hamilton’s hair. “Bright as autumn yours is, sir.”

Hamilton nods. “Yes, he said so too.”

“Who, sir?”

Hamilton frowns and gestures behind the man. “You may see yourselves out.”

The man nods and disappears from the gap.

Hamilton turns back to the trunks, listening as his footsteps walk away down the stairs. The footsteps continue instead of fading as Hamilton listens, growing closer, as if the man walks toward him instead of away. Hamilton realizes the footsteps sound different, heavier despite the absence of any seen shoes or boots. A shadow passes near Hamilton’s feet following the steps. He turns his head and sees gold buttons and the shape of a heart in the corner of a coat disappear in the window. 

Hamilton clasps his hands together, digging his nails into his skin, attempting to breathe slowly in and out as his lips stretch wide in a smile – he is not alone, Laurens has not left him yet.

Hamilton joins three committees his first week with Congress. He submits motions to create two more of his own. He gives four speeches, of varying lengths, on the need for monetary backing of their federal government and pressure upon the states to support the union financially.

“I had heard of your fervor,” James Duane, another representative of New York, says to him. “But you might try not to burn yourself through a whole term’s worth of energy and good graces in but a week.”

“I did not come for the making of friends, Duane.”

“Only political enemies.”

“The war has supplied me of those, I assure you.”

Alternatively, Hamilton works on those connections made through the army and his new Schuyler family. While Hamilton may be new to Congress and politics of this sort, as an aide-de-camp he played politics just as acutely.

“A pleasure to have someone with drive among our Congressional veterans now,” the new president for this term, Elias Boudinot, tells him. “And one who fought.”

“And I glad to have a man at our head who fought himself and understands the losses we suffered and must recoup now.”

Back at his house, the speeches of Congress still swirling through his head, Hamilton walks the empty rooms, hoping to see a familiar face. 

“Laurens?” Hamilton cocks his head. “I should tell you of the debate today. You would be astonished the reluctance of men to compromise on obvious needs.”

Hamilton runs his hand over the pale blue wallpaper, a color just a shade darker than that of Laurens’ eyes.

“Or perhaps you would tell me I should expect no better. You fought politics enough yourself in Charleston, did you not?”

He wishes he could talk to his friend of his new work, see his face and remember the ally he always had.

“Come now, John, show yourself,” Hamilton asks.

He watches the corners of his parlor and the windows of his study. He looks for a reflection unlike his. He tries to see a blue coat and dirty boots.

“Laurens?”

As he stops in the hall, he catches a glimpse up the stairs, a familiar profile and blond hair. Hamilton stops breathing and suddenly takes the stairs two at a time, nearly falling as he reaches the top. He slams his chest hard against the door frame of his bedroom where the figure turned. No one waits inside.

A brief for Congress waits below stairs in Hamilton’s study he must finish tonight. The sun set an hour past and a candle burns beside the papers, quill and ink waiting. Yet Hamilton walks along the short upstairs hallway. He paces a circle around his second bedroom, still only a storage room with empty crates and a trunk full of memories. He stares at the window hoping, straining his eyes, asking with his mouth closed. 

He wanders into his bedroom, hand brushing the drapes, the fine sheets, the polished wood. He stops beside the small desk in that room, a letter to Betsy half written upon the surface. Hamilton turns the paper over, hiding the words of affection and marriage. Can jealousy last through into death? Hamilton turns to face the majority of the room. He holds his breath, waiting, but only silence answers his action.

Hamilton blows out a slow breath and steps forward again, following his own footsteps back to the stairs. He runs his hand along the bannister thinking of headquarters at Valley Forge, that house similar to this one in layout. He thinks about Laurens touching his shoulders when Hamilton stayed too long at their aide-de-camp table with papers before him. He feels the remembered touch of lips at the nape of his neck. Hamilton runs his hand under his collar. Can remembering distinctly enough bring forth that which a man yearns for, enough to bring back a man he misses as a persistent wound?

“John?” Hamilton calls to the empty hall back on the lower floor. “Are you… John?”

His jaw clenches then he fists his hands. “John? Answer me.” 

He turns sharply into the parlor, lit by two candles on the mantel. He pushes back the new curtains at the first window, looking behind each one. He marches around to the second window, knocking his hip into the small table so the punch bowl atop wobbles. Hamilton fists his hand into cloth and pushes the curtains wide. He listens for anything – metal, breath, a horse, footsteps, any noise or familiar sign. No matter how Hamilton tries to chase him, tries to find him in the darkness, Laurens remains elusive as a ghost might be expected to behave. Hamilton wants to see him despite how it cracks his heart.

He twists his head around. “John!” Hamilton throws the curtains away from him, the pair swaying calmly and not at all satisfying in their dismissal. “Laurens? Would you prefer I keep we formal? Lieutenant Colonel? Hmm?”

Hamilton stomps around the pair of chairs which face the hearth. He knocks his knuckles upon the sideboard furthest from the parlor door. He knocks on it again as if requesting entrance.

“Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens!” Hamilton frowns deeply at the silence then rubs a hand over his eyes. “Laurens? Laurens, I… did not mean to sound...” Hamilton sighs and drops his hand to his side. “I speak only to myself now, is that it? What should Betsy say, were she here?”

Hamilton moves slowly toward the parlor door once more, his head tilted with one ear up as if this should aid in listening for what he hopes to hear.

“If I mention my wife more would you appear to argue?” Hamilton asks. “If I should recount my love for her, the happiness of our marriage and home? I remember your anger over her clear enough.” Hamilton frowns again as he steps into the dark hall. “Well, I am angry now so listen to me!” Hamilton slams his fist against the wall. “Why should you appear and say nothing? You are not one for silence, John.”

Hamilton slams the base of his fist against the wall again. He breathes in and out. He puts both his palms over his heaving chest. He rubs his thumbs over the wool, a weave far finer than his uniform had been. Laurens’ uniform felt just the same as Hamilton’s, the differences in their backgrounds absent when Hamilton removed that heavy fabric, when he kissed Laurens’ skin after removing a wool waistcoat and linen shirt, when he pushed Laurens’ firm body down onto cotton blankets and Laurens said, ‘please, touch me.’

“John,” Hamilton hisses. “Is it so hard for you now? You spared me no fears before in Albany or will you simply not come when called?”

He hears nothing; no footsteps, no whisper, no breath of air, not one minuscule sign of a presence.

“Why? Why should you haunt me and not speak to me?”

Hamilton turns sharply and walks back to his study. A soft glow from the lone candle illuminates the room. He runs his tongue over his teeth, focusing his gaze on the waiting brief. He rode to Philadelphia for Congress, for his country and his duty. Laurens understands duty and perhaps that is what his absence tells Hamilton; do your duty.

“As you wish,” Hamilton whispers.

He pulls back the chair, flipping out the fall of his coat then sits down upon the chair. He picks up a quill waiting in the stand. He knows he should have pencil notes from the day’s session. He shifts the papers around, a draft he wrote before dinner with lines crossed through whole paragraphs. 

Suddenly a book slams onto the floor behind him. Hamilton jolts in his chair, spinning around. He sees a thick book he does not instantly recognized on the floor. A thin pamphlet sits atop the open pages, as though now escaping capture within the bound volume. The title reads, “Common Sense.” Then a paper rustles beside Hamilton’s hand. He turns around again to see his notes from Congress beside his hand and Laurens sitting, as if upon an absent chair, leaned against the wall, right beside his desk.

“John…” Hamilton breathes out, his voice suddenly thin and frail, as if he the dead man.

Laurens tips his head back against the wall, casual and calm, like a late night in Laurens’ father’s house, three years ago, with the General asleep above and Congress their accusers instead of Hamilton’s colleagues.

“You came,” Hamilton says quietly.

Laurens slowly rests his fingertips upon the edge of the desk, inches away from Hamilton’s. Then he flicks the corner of the scratch paper with Hamilton’s notes. The paper flutters closer to Hamilton brushing his hand. Hamilton breathes in sharply and pulls back. He has heard Laurens, seen him, felt him near but he has not seen Laurens change the solid world. 

Hamilton grasps the piece of paper in one hand and pulls his other up to his tearing eyes. “Tell me.” He pulls his hand away from his face and lays it upon the desk beside Laurens’. “Laurens, tell me why you… if this means…”

Laurens shifts his head up away from the wall, sluggish and jerky at once. Hamilton blinks and finds it difficult to focus upon Laurens’ face. The faint candlelight touches Laurens and passes through him at the same time, in and out of shadow as if smoke.

“John, if you would but say…” He shifts his hand nearer Laurens’.

Laurens head turns, his figure suddenly standing beside Hamilton, then facing the other direction, walking away into darkness.

“Wait!”

Hamilton grasps out, his chair scraping loudly, to try and catch Laurens as if Laurens were material and whole. His fingers close around themselves, nothing but air in an empty room. Hamilton drops his hands onto his lap, the paper Laurens delivered clasped in his other hand.

“Please talk to me,” Hamilton whispers.

He wants Laurens to speak to him in the same moment he sees him – not just shadows or whispers or a glimpse as he turns. He wants Laurens to sit beside him in the candlelight, laugh, talk and smile in his pristine uniform, hold Hamilton’s hand and just be there, as close to alive as Hamilton can make him.

“I know it but a month since Congress convened but we must push the finance issue harder,” Hamilton says as he walks down fifth street in Philadelphia.

“You know I am beside you in this,” Gouverneur Morris replies, “but it is leverage we need.”

“Debt is not leverage enough? The war –”

“The states grow tired of this war dragging on. You cannot use that as a point.”

Hamilton shakes his head. “I must use it as a point. It is the reason we have this unified government and that we must maintain it hence. They cannot think to allow this government no means to finish the fight, to form a country which is not just colonies. No man wishes to part with his own money but nor do they frown from the help of a government when they should need it.”

“You preach to a penitent man, Hamilton.” Morris makes an indeterminate noise and taps the wood of his false leg upon the street as if to make a point. “Leverage is still the better option.”

“Leverage over sense?”

“Do not play me, Hamilton.” The two men pause briefly as they wait for a carriage to pass as they cross Chestnut street. “Sense rarely wins over pride.”

“Indeed.” Hamilton twists one of the covered buttons of his green suit, a frown deepening on his face. “These men know as well as we that money to a government is what should make it function. I would think that a pang to their pride.”

“Not if their own state should be secure. This is why I press so upon the idea of a man as a citizen of the United States not New York or Virginia.”

“Yes.” 

Hamilton taps his walking stick against the brick of a public house. Morris begins to slow their walk, leaning more upon his good leg. Hamilton glances around the city street, people at work, upon errands, daily lives that think not of that which keeps them secure as they are. Hamilton fists his hands tighter about the portfolio in his other hand as they turn onto Market Street.

“There must be a manner to impress upon the Congress the debts of the war being a responsibility of the whole.”

Morris grunts. “Hamilton, what would you say?”

“That the men of this country fought to make it so and we must make our country one of note and good standing in the eyes of the world.”

“It is easy for our fellow congressmen to forget this when their land is freed and men no longer die.”

“Men still die,” Hamilton retorts sharply. “The war is not done and men – dear friends – still fall.”

“Here we are,” Morris says abruptly as he stops at the brick front steps of Hamilton’s house. “It was a good find,” Morris gestures to the house. “Only a street away.”

“I am here for Congress,” Hamilton says, his mind less on the conversation now and more on a field he never saw far south. “It made sense to reside as near as possible.” He thinks not of cobblestone streets and carriage wheels. He thinks of marshy grasses and battle cries.

“I do not diminish your reasoning, Hamilton.” Hamilton looks up at Morris. He cocks his head, shifting his weight more toward his right side. “The plight of soldiers lost or survived does not land as heavily as it should. Our Congress would prefer to have them serve then send them away once more.”

“Perhaps I wish those who also serve by pen and paper to be better than the common thought.”

Morris scoffs. “Rich men with slaves or land behind them, you ask them to be better?”

“I have known better men,” Hamilton replies hotly. “I have served with them and lost them.” 

Hamilton glances up at the windows of his house behind Morris. Laurens stands in the parlor window looking out. Sunlight shines through his pale skin, not glinting against metal buttons or highlighting the honey blond of his hair as it would in life. Yet the light illuminates the red wound across his chest, a deep ruby the most life-like thing upon his specter of death.

Hamilton hears Morris speaking – taxation needing actions more than morality to move forward – but he listens less. He stares up at Laurens in the window whose paler eyes look back into him. Laurens shifts his head and the curtains move as if from a breeze. 

Hamilton inhales sharply. “John…” 

He wants Laurens to know he sees him, that he knows Laurens remains, that he believes.

Laurens’ mouth moves, words forming. Hamilton cocks his head, turning away from the speech of Morris. He strains to hear through distance and glass and death. He wills himself to focus, to watch Laurens’ pale, inviting mouth and understand what words he attempts to speak.

Laurens lips say, ‘Come in, come home.’

“Good day, Morris,” Hamilton says abruptly, cutting off Morris' words. “I shall see you upon the morrow.”

“Ah, indeed, good day,” Morris says as Hamilton twists around him, shifting his walking stick into his other hand and grasping the door handle.

Hamilton shoves the door open, near tumbling inside, and slams the door behind him. He turns quickly into the parlor, but no unearthly presence stands beside the window, no Laurens.

“Damn it!” Hamilton snaps and throws his portfolio onto the floor with a loud clap.

Hamilton puts one hand over his eyes and blows out a harsh breath. His walking stick falls from his hand, thumping against his portfolio then rolling across the wood floor. Hamilton pulls his other hand up against his face two, forcing his breath to remain steady in and out. Then he pulls his hands away pressing his pointer fingers harshly against the growing water at the corner of his eyes.

Hamilton’s arms fall limp at his sides. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

A hollow sound like wind through creaking trees replies, _‘I am always speaking to you.’_

Hamilton twists around away from the parlor back toward the hall. Laurens stands near the stairs, blocking the path of the hall toward the back study. He appears more solid than he had in the window, less like a haze and more like a cloud.

“Laurens,” Hamilton says with a tremor to the tone despite the rigidness of his stance.

Laurens turns his head from left to right, blinking slowly at Hamilton from just behind where a beam of sunlight lands upon the floor. Hamilton notices, as he somehow had not before, Laurens’ chest remains still without breath.

 _‘I remember you,’_ Laurens says.

“Yes.”

Laurens reaches out his hand as if to touch Hamilton, his fingers curling around into his palm. _‘I miss you.’_

Hamilton takes one step forward. “John, I –”

Laurens’ head turns and he dissolves away into the air like gun smoke.

“No.” Hamilton steps forward into the space where Laurens stood, nothing there, not a sign. He smacks his hand on the stair banister. “No!”

“Our demands are as follows.” A Captain Alexander McDougall addresses Congress. “The first being that of the army’s pay which has not been given for several months.”

Captain McDougall represents a group of army officers lobbying congress for the absent pay he speaks upon. A few of Hamilton’s colleagues murmur about treason and munity as the Captain speaks, even accusations against General Washington’s name. Hamilton, however, sits in his chair hearing an argument years past, spoken in familiar voices.

“Second being the assurance of soldier and officer pensions at the conclusion of the war.”

Hamilton shuts his eyes, walking stick tight in his fist. He remembers Caleb Gibbs holding an account book, railing on the inevitably of desertions in the face of absent pay and failing currency. 

“Third, if Congress is unable to afford these pensions, that of a half-salary for life for each soldier, then the pension could be changed to a lump-sum payment.”

Hamilton imagines Robert Hanson Harrison listing the needs of their army, the supply which must supersede soldier salary. A chill permiates the Valley Forge aide-de-camp room where Tench Tilghman attempts to reorder their accounts to allow even a month’s worth of pay. Richard Kidder Meade stands over him listing missing boots, reduced rations as James McHenry insists on medical needs as paramount; for if a soldier should be dead, how well would his pay serve then. John Fitzgerald leans with crossed arms in the doorway espousing that the men should complain less and serve out of patriotism causing half the room to shout him down. 

Beside Hamilton on the opposite of the room, the pair of them quiet side by side, Laurens sits within a glow of sun, the morning light turning Laurens’ hair to honey. When Laurens turns his face toward Hamilton, Hamilton reaches out and runs his hand over Laurens’ brow and into his hair; not as he ever would have in the presence of their other aides. Laurens smiles back at him with Hamilton’s fingers trapped in the glow. When Laurens’ lips move, Hamilton hears everything he wants to hear, every affectionate word he will never hear again.

“Thank you, Captain. We shall discuss your proposition and requests.”

Hamilton opens his eyes as the Congress room doors close behind Captain McDougall and the debate begins.

Hours later, as Congress adjourns with nothing yet decided and tensions high, Hamilton exits the hall with the flood of other Congressmen.

“Shameful display,” Hamilton growls. “Patriotism is given easily by those with wealth behind them and yet we ask those with none to ignore such that they deserve? A man, his family, cannot live upon patriotism.”

“But it is something we could use,” Robert Morris, no relation to Gouverneur but in the same camp of opinion, hisses low to Hamilton. 

Hamilton frowns at R. Morris as they shift to the opposite side of the hall away from where the other Congressmen file toward the main doors of Independence Hall. “You think of a money issue to connect with our own?”

“I think if the national government cannot pay its soldiers then our fellow Congressmen may begin to think what else it cannot pay for and what else it cannot do. It is perfect leverage to work upon for our suits.”

Hamilton nods. “We should speak to Gouverneur Morris as well.”

R. Morris stands up straighter, his neck straining. “Yes, I shall find him now.”

“And the Captain, we should speak with…” 

R. Morris moves away, however, before Hamilton may finish his remark, likely to chase down G. Morris before he should leave out of reach.

Hamilton presses his lips tight then turns back to the wall where his hat hangs, a deep black with a black ribbon along the brim. Hamilton received the hat two years past as a gift from Laurens. 

A chill abruptly runs up Hamilton’s back like fingertips tracing his spine and over his neck. Hamilton breathes out with the shock, laying his hand flat against the hall to support himself.

_‘Left alone on the field to die.’_

Hamilton turns his head sharply to the deserted end of the hall. Laurens twists around, face turned over his shoulder back toward Hamilton. The tops of his boots and bottom of his coat disappear into the air. His arm reaches out toward Hamilton, hand imploring, fingers as white as the ice in Hamilton’s back. The air smells of gun smoke and Hamilton tastes copper on his tongue. Hamilton reaches out toward Laurens, wanting.

Hamilton’s hat tumbles down from the wall and Hamilton catches it one handed, smashed against his chest. He leans heavily on his walking stick until he sags and his shoulder presses against the wall. He grips the hat tightly staring at the empty hall, waiting, hoping while his body shakes.

Hamilton descends the stairs of his house, three books in hand with his glasses balanced on top. He has a committee meeting to attend which he fears shall accomplish nothing more than circular debate. He holds two quills between his teeth and wonders if it would be more prudent to bring his travel writing desk. Yes, he works now in a city with tables and chair readily available, but his travel desk easily holds all he should need.

“Does it have paper,” he asks himself, forgetting the quills he bites, and they fall from his mouth.

Hamilton pulls a hand away from the stack of books to try and catch the quills causing the tower to wobble. He quickly pulls his hand back to the books but not in time to stop his glasses from falling. However, as soon as he sees them disappear over the book edge, they abruptly slide back atop the books. Hamilton stands still, neither the books nor his glasses in danger any longer.

“Laurens?” Hamilton asks quietly. “John?”

_‘Alexander.’_

Hamilton looks over the edge of the stairs, peers into the parlor then finally turns to the base of the staircase. Laurens rests his hand upon the rounded head at the base of the banister. He stands in profile so no blood on his chest or dirt on his breeches can be seen. His hair appears to be braided tightly, only a few hairs askew at his cheek as it had always fell. 

“Thank you,” Hamilton says quietly, holding the books against his chest. 

Laurens says nothing nor does he turn his head. Hamilton starts to walk slowly down the stairs, one step at a time. Laurens remains still, does not move nor fade.

“Did you know it would… or are you...” Hamilton huffs, glancing down at his glasses then looking up again. “Do you watch? Are you watching over me like some angel, Laurens?”

Laurens still faces the wall in profile. _‘I am not what you think I am.’_

Hamilton frowns. “Not a ghost? Not dead because…” Hamilton bites his teeth together feeling bile in the back of his throat at the word. “What are you?”

Laurens finally turns and tits his head at Hamilton as if he does not understand the question.

“I know you.” Hamilton insists.

_‘I am not here.’_

“But you are.”

_‘I am still there.’_

“No,” Hamilton insists wanting to hurl his books at the floor, at Laurens, at the distant unknown solider that bore Laurens down. “You are here. I can see you!”

 _‘Yes.’_ Laurens’ voice sounds further away, like the moan of a ship on the bay. _‘You can see.’_

Hamilton rubs his hands against the leather of the books, staring through the thin shape of Laurens. He wants to touch that cheek, that familiar jaw line. He wants to feel Laurens’ hands upon his waist, press his nose into Laurens hair and smell that scent which was distinctly Laurens.

Hamilton fears to reach out now, can smell only earth and ash. He shifts his weight forward, only a step between them, and rests his arm against the banister. “I miss you.”

Laurens smiles, fond and sweet and almost real. _‘I am,’_ he says as though lifted from the page of the letter he echoes, _‘your affectionate.’_

“Need I argue more about the need for a permanent revenue source?” Hamilton insists, pouring claret into his glass.

“I think all of Congress knows your opinion on such,” James Madison replies taking the bottle away from Hamilton.

“Your opinion is the same!”

“We all share your opinion here,” G. Morris says drumming his hand on his false leg. “But I think Madison means your opinion is the most widely known to our fellow Congressmen.”

Hamilton scoffs. “Would you have me muzzle myself?”

“Yes,” all three of the other men in the parlor cry.

Hamilton gapes at them.

R. Morris picks up a pair of the papers cluttered on the table between them. “You have plans enough and bills to attempt, you need not place the whole of your mind before the Congress when some planning could be of use before speeches.”

“I did not say…”

“The Newburgh Conspiracy,” R. Morris continues, tugging at his cravat.

G. Morris scoffs. “Do we call it a conspiracy now?”

“Is not mutiny cause enough to claim this title?” Madison asks, pulling open the buttons of his pink waistcoat.

G. Morris finishes his glass of port. “They have reason.”

“They have regulations.”

“But,” R. Morris interrupts. “It is an event we can use, a suit even before Congress and focused predominately upon the money problems of the army and thus our government.”

“It is leverage,” Hamilton summarizes.

“You think it enough?” Madison asks.

“I think it worth an attempt,” Hamilton says. “We cannot be a country that does not pay our soldiers for the freedom they bought.” Hamilton grits his teeth. “Many with their lives.”

“Amen,” G. Morris mutters.

“It is an event which can play upon the honor of our fellow Congressmen and give reason enough to push through the issue of taxation and thus powers of the federal government.”

“Do not over stretch, Hamilton,” R. Morris cautions. “If we focus –”

“One thing may bring about the whole.”

“The whole of what? Do you wish to overhaul the whole –”

“Yes!”

“Pass the bottle, would you?” G. Morris asks.

Madison chuckles, handing it across the table to G. Morris. “What would you write tonight, Hamilton? If it be a bill, I will back you, but you must tread lightly. We are still not even signed in peace with England.”

Hamilton bites the edge of his lip. “I am aware.” Hamilton picks up a blank sheet of paper. “If we…” He stops speaking abruptly as he looks past R. Morris’ head toward the corner of the room.

Laurens stands with his hand upon the pommel of his sword, shoulder leaning against the wall.

“If we are to begin the issue of taxation this must lead to the weight behind it,” R. Morris says. “Our centralized government must have the power to enforce this.”

“What man should pay what he must not?” G. Morris says with a flick of his hand in the air.

Laurens walks slowly behind the men, tapping his hand rhythmically over the gold of his sword, occasionally pulling it from the scabbard but an inch to then let it fall down once more with an audible clink.

“We must rewrite the Articles if that is your wish,” Madison says.

R. Morris points with the quill in his hand. “Hamilton is keen to do thus.”

Hamilton grips the arms of his chair. “I… I am… can… can you see…”

“I can see how easily the debate will turn to the will of the states and comparison to a monarch,” Madison says. “We must have firm backing and reason on our side or we will fall into stagnation once more.”

Laurens lingers near the mantel, his hand fisted around his sword. He pulls up his other hand and places it over the stain across his chest. Hamilton raises his own hand in mirror and looks down at the green stripes of his waistcoat, not a mark upon it.

“This soldier uprising is the prefect backing,” R. Morris says. “It is a danger to our army, and it is one which must be solved by a federal government as the army is not individually state bound.”

Laurens pulls his hand away from his chest then drags it across the white mantel piece as he begins to walk again. A deep red smear spreads out from Laurens’ fingertips, the line remaining constant as if he bleeds straight from his hand.

“Do you see?” Hamilton asks urgently. “Do you see him?”

“Him?” R. Morris asks. He glances quickly behind him where Laurens no longer walks. He turns back and looks at G. Morris. “What mischief do you cause? I thought we intended progress with our wine?”

“Me? Why do you single me out?”

“Because you lost your leg jumping from a window.”

Madison snorts.

The two Morrises begin to argue good naturedly as Hamilton stares at the white paint of the mantel. Then he sees buff wool out of the corner of his eye, a knee bent down beside him.

_‘Not enough, Hamilton.’_

“I try… I am trying.” He turns his head slowly to face Laurens. “I am trying to change our country.”

Lauren cocks his head, the other three men oblivious or unable to see, and holds up his bloody hand. _‘Not enough to change this.’_

Hamilton waits near the fire in the detached kitchen, across the small garden, at the rear of his house. A tea kettle hangs over the fire with a faint stream of steam issuing from the spout. He scrapes the edge of a tea block with a dull knife so black leaves fall into his white porcelain pot. The girl Hamilton hired for cooking and cleaning only works on a part time basis and lives elsewhere, leaving such a late-night desire to Hamilton’s own skills.

“I should have the knives sharpened,” he mutters to himself as he scrapes.

The hour lies too late for one to drink tea, but Hamilton ignores this. He would prefer not to sleep. His dreams would either bring longing visions of his Eliza or sorrowful memories of Laurens.

_‘You taught me my errors like this once.’_

Hamilton tightens his fingers around the knife in his hand. Then he puts it down upon the table and places the tea block back into its tin box.

“Because you could not make your own tea. You thought to boil your water directly in the china pot right upon the fire.” 

Hamilton finally pulls his head up. Laurens lingers near the one small window of the kitchen. Moonlight casts through Laurens onto the floor leaving no shadow. 

“Do you remember that?” Hamilton asks.

Laurens smiles but says nothing.

“You sat up on the table.” Hamilton runs his hand along the worn wooden table where his tea supplies sit. “A larger table than this, needed for half a dozen soldiers and not one lone man.” Laurens watches Hamilton and it appears like listening. 

“I poured the water, fixed you a cup. I thought…” Hamilton swallows. “I thought you looked so fetching sitting up with your legs hanging and your breeches…” 

Hamilton shakes his head. He fists his hand on the table. “That is just a memory. That is gone but you are…” Hamilton looks up at the ghost from his heart again. “Are you really here? Is it really you?”

 _‘You can see me,’_ Laurens answers.

Hamilton shakes his head. “I can, but are you really… Am I going mad?”

Laurens does not answer.

Hamilton blows out a slow breath. He swallows again and tries to control the rising tide within in his chest – every moment lost, every day apart, every time he loved Eliza more, every time he forgot Laurens, every happy moment he had in the days between when Laurens died and Hamilton learned the truth.

“Did you love me?” Hamilton asks as his voice cracks.

_‘You knew my heart.’_

Hamilton puts his hands over his face, pressing the heels of his palms hard against his eyes. When the kettle behind him begins to squeal he drops his hands and stares at the moonlight on the floor.

The cold wakes Hamilton first, a reminder of winter quartering and inadequate blankets. He thinks about Eliza lying beside him, warming the empty bed now. He breathes out as he opens his eyes to the dark canopy above him. No candle lights the room, no hint of sun. He reminds himself January bites as cold in Philadelphia as in Albany. Yet he knows the cold he feels hails from something more than weather.

Hamilton turns his head slowly to the left. Laurens stares back at him as if his head lies upon a pillow at eye level with Hamilton. He remains atop the covers in his same soiled uniform. Hamilton feels exposed and near to naked in only his night shirt. He clutches at the sheets above his hands but cannot look away now from Laurens, cannot move.

 _‘Alex,’_ Laurens says, his lips a second behind the words. _‘My boy.’_

Hamilton attempts to breathe in slowly. He opens his mouth but cannot speak for the mix of feeling within. He wants to reach out and touch Laurens but fears what he should feel if he did.

Laurens’ hand suddenly raises above the two of them, his fingers fluttering like a maestro conducting the air. Hamilton holds his breath or perhaps he cannot breathe in.

_‘I am still yours.’_

Laurens fingers float down through the air in stops and starts. Hamilton’s eyes follow them terrified of when they find his cheek.

“Jack,” Hamilton gasps as Laurens’ fingers pass just by his lips and bury deep into the depths of the bed beneath them.

Then he focuses once more on Laurens lying beside him – as he used to do, as many nights they had together, as beautiful and ethereal as Hamilton thought him in life. Laurens shifts close and his lips touch Hamilton’s. His lips press firm against Hamilton’s and Hamilton feels it – feels Laurens’ lips as if he lay there alive and chilled through from ice and snow. The cold creeps through Hamilton’s mouth, follows the path of his veins so his fingertips grown numb and his vision fogs. The cold tightens Hamilton’s joints, aching in his knees and ankles as Laurens’ lips linger over his. Hamilton kisses back, tries to chase a small bedroom and a smaller bed in Valley Forge, a memory warmer than the cold spreading through him now, dulling the burning of his lungs. 

_‘I still have you,’_ Laurens whispers over Hamilton’s lips.

Hamilton breathes in harshly, painfully, against the force of the cold and Laurens holding him there – he breathes in Laurens. 

Hamilton jerks back and away so violently he falls from the bed. He slams his tailbone into the floor as the sheets tangle about his feet, though he hardly notices the pain. He pulls his legs free and shoves backward until he hits the wall. He focuses only on attempting to breathe in and out, trying to taste the real, fresh air instead of the hollow feeling of Laurens’ lungs, of breathing in nothing. He stares at the empty bed as he gasps, imagining the sheets look more like a shroud and the frame a coffin.

Hamilton writes to his wife in the first-floor study. Though only two months have passed since their separation, Hamilton needs his Betsy beside him once more. Congress moves slowly, circling around progress with more speeches than action. His home remains empty but for himself and memories. Hamilton feels half mad each night – a whisper, a footstep, a view in a window or figure suddenly by his side but for seconds. Hamilton cannot live only in memory and death. His wife, his son and his family, remain alive.

“I miss you so,” Hamilton mutters as he must dip his quill in ink once more in the middle of the phrase upon the page. “My wife…”

Philadelphia feels like a half existence. Hamilton craves the politics, the duty to one’s country, to improve the perception and station of their nation upon the world. Yet a man needs support and one’s fellow Congressmen do not do this. A ghost haunting his corners and nights with longing and fear do not make a life.

“A man needs a wife.” Hamilton frowns to himself, glaring at the curtains. “I told you this, Laurens, and it remains true.”

Hamilton presses hard on the paper, his letters turning thick. “I need her. I love her. My Betsy.”

Hamilton needs what is real; not only what he has lost.

_‘Your wife.’_

The quill in Hamilton’s hand cracks in half as he jolts, scraping a black line across the page like a tear. Hamilton looks up at Laurens seated beside the desk in the spot Hamilton has seen him several times, nothing but air beneath him. His hands lie in his lap and his eyes stare down at the page.

“I… I need my wife,” Hamilton says weakly.

 _‘Your… wife…’_ Laurens repeats as if he labors to find the words.

“You knew that then. I told you. It… I have not changed in this.” Hamilton swallows. “You remember?”

Laurens’ head drags up slowly, like rippling water. _‘I remember… I remember.’_

His tone sounds as though he remembers something else or does not remember at all; the sound of his voice seems to echo around an amphitheater and not a simple room in a city house.

“I needed you too.”

Laurens blinks and his head tilts. _‘Needed…’_

“Yes, I did – I do. Can you not see that?”

_‘I see you.’_

“You speak in riddles!” Hamilton’s hand tightens around the broken quill, sharp bits digging into his hand. “I do not understand what you seek!”

 _‘And what do you seek?’_ Laurens hand rises and hovers over the desk where the ruined letter lies.

“I seek the knowledge of what you are, of why you are here.”

_‘Would you have me go?’_

Hamilton shakes his head. “No, no I… I can’t… Not again.” Hamilton breathes in deep and breathes out like a sob. “I am in agony over the loss of you.” 

_‘And I you.’_

Laurens’ hand sweeps downward straight through the desk. The letter upon it whips up into the air as if upon a gust of wind. It lands on the floor several feet behind Hamilton’s chair. Hamilton keeps his eyes on the specter of Laurens.

“I cannot be alone, not when I have her.” Hamilton clenches his jaw. “You would know this. You would understand this.”

 _‘Did I then?’_ Laurens asks as he reaches out one hand toward Hamilton’s face but stopping short of touching him.

Hamilton looks over Laurens’ features. He tries to determine how much they have changed in appearance since Hamilton saw him alive at Yorktown a year ago; his face looks thinner, his hands more calloused, his uniform worn with new tears. Does he appear different from when he first appeared in Albany? Has the stain of red blood grown? Is his hair wilder and more unkempt? Or does Hamilton imagine all these changes? Does Hamilton only see what he fears to see, his Laurens deteriorating, decaying wherever he lies underground.

“Oh God…” Hamilton says aloud and chokes back another sob. “I do not know where you are buried.”

Hamilton finally unclenches his hand. The pieces of quill fall onto the desk. Hamilton looks down at small droplets of blood on his palm. Then he looks up at Laurens again. Laurens pulls his hand back and Hamilton hears distant cannon, a pained horse whinny, shouting that sounds like fear.

“What happened,” Hamilton asks slowly, pressing his thumb against the cuts in his palm, “when you died?”

Laurens opens his mouth, begins to fade and the words filter out of the air, _‘I am fighting.’_

“Mrs. Hamilton.”

Eliza smiles at him as he pulls the door wider for her entrance. “Mr. Hamilton.”

Hamilton closes the door behind her swiftly then pulls her into his arms. He kisses her firmly on the lips, his hand gripping at the back of her tightly queued hair. She tastes like ocean water, like lavender, full and whole and his and he clutches her as close as the clothes between them allow.

Eliza gasp as she leans her head back. “Alexander, I may dare say you missed me.”

“Did my letters not convince you so?”

She laughs prettily like a bell, like wind chimes, like someone so very alive in his deathly house. She palms his cheek. “I prefer your presence and arms than that of your words.”

“But I pen such masterful words.”

“You do,” Eliza says as she steps back and removes her cloak. “Yet as your wife I feel I deserve more than your fine words.”

“You do,” Hamilton says as he takes her hat.

Hamilton turns around to face the stairs, grinning, readying to hang her cloak. He freezes with his hands held up before his chest, the cloth like a shield and the red ribbon fluttering like a banner on what should not be a field of battle.

Laurens stands at the peak of the stairs. He holds his sword in his hand with the flat side facing Hamilton.

“I sent Matthew to the rear,” Eliza says as she pulls off her gloves beside Hamilton. “I brought less trunks than you might fear.”

Laurens tips up his chin and Hamilton watches the slow pull of his eyes toward Eliza. His sword arm twists, the weapon inching away from Laurens’ person and the sharp edge turning upward. His other hand raises slowly, palm up as if Laurens should be summoning dead soldiers lined up behind him.

“I have faith in you enough, my darling,” Eliza continues, crossing in front of Hamilton to lay her gloves upon the small receiving table beside the door. “But I am certain there is much a man living as a bachelor will have forgotten.”

Hamilton mouths, ‘no,’ shakes his head. He wants to ask for mercy, for benevolence from the man before him. He knows the expression upon this vision’s face. Even in death Laurens’ anger – the rage and fire of the battlefield – shows clearly in the tension of his mouth and angle of his head, the subtle squint to his eyes.

He says, _‘You lied.’_

“Have you even hired a woman to clean yet?”

“No,” Hamilton whispers as his hands clench tighter, bunching Eliza’s cloak. “I didn’t.”

Laurens breathes out – as loud as a gunshot to Hamilton’s ears. Hamilton hears Laurens’ boots moving down the stairs though his presence at the top does not move, sword still threatening and eyes growing dark as Eliza’s.

“No,” Hamilton says again, thinking wildly about his own sword. Did he even bring it? Does it remain in Albany? How can he protect one love from another with but fabric in his hands? “No, please.”

“We must have someone to clean,” Eliza says, looking up into his face. Then she frowns. “Alexander?”

Laurens grins wide, like the baring of teeth, like the face he made before he rushed British troops at Brandywine, like a threat. 

_‘Always a fight.’_

Dark blood drips down his free hand still held up before him. Hamilton cannot tell if it hits the floor, cannot tell if Laurens becomes more real, more solid as he stares.

“I can’t…”

“Alexander, you are…” Then Eliza turns around toward the staircase.

Eliza suddenly gasps aloud. Laurens’ head jerks, his sword singing as he twists around as if a combatant waits behind him and Hamilton finally drops Eliza’s cloak. 

Eliza grips Hamilton’s arm, so her nails dig into his wrist. “Dear Lord, Alexander, did you see him?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you that are interested, I have a release date for my book Duty and Inclination now: July 2, 2020
> 
> To learn more check out my blog post [here](https://www.dutyandinclination.com/post/duty-and-inclination-publish-date).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to warn you, this chapter gets rough.

“You cannot say I imagined him, Alexander!”

“Betsy…”

“He was real, I saw him there!” She points backward toward the hall as they rush into the bedroom.

“If you but pause…”

“No!” Eliza pushes aside the curtains on Hamilton’s bed, quickly turning away again to march toward the wardrobe. “He stood at the head of the stairs, he moved like… he – he… I saw him!”

“You said he wore a uniform like mine, perhaps you remembered –”

Betsy rounds on him just as she opens one door of the wardrobe. “Remembered an unfamiliar soldier in a house I have never been before?”

“But a uniform you said –”

“It was not some vision of you! He had no red hair.” She yanks open the second door. “I did not recognize the man, the… that vision I have never seen before!”

“You met many soldiers during your stay in Morristown, perhaps it was a recollection of someone then.”

“A recollection?” Betsy says as she shuts both doors tight again at only clothing and shoes found within. “Memory and a figure standing on the stairs are not one and the same.” 

“Betsy…”

She turns toward the windows grasping at the curtains. “Why do you try to convince me of the fallacy of what you saw too?” She turns toward him again. “I saw your face. You were afraid.”

“I was afraid _for_ you.”

Betsy huffs loudly and marches toward the bedroom door. “I am your wife, Alexander, do not lie to me!”

“I do not!” He does not lie, not completely. He is so very afraid for her now.

“Then tell me what you saw.” She turns again, both of them back in the hall. She points toward the head of the stairs. “He stood there, right there. He held a sword, wore a uniform, it was seconds, but it was not my imaginings!”

Hamilton holds up his hands placatingly. “There lives no other person within this house but we two.”

“It was not mere light. It was a person!”

“Then what do you say, Betsy?” Hamilton asks, his voice turning harsh. 

Betsy’s shakes her head. “I say I saw…”

“Saw what exactly?” Hamilton gestures to the bedroom. “What did you look for then, a soldier hiding as if some game?”

“No!”

“Then what do you say, what do you suppose you saw, a ghost?”

Betsy pauses, her head turning away and Hamilton knows he has her. “I… I do not believe…”

“Do not believe in spirits?”

She turns back to him. “In our passing all will be taken to their reward or punishment; we do not remain.”

“Exactly.”

Betsy breathes slowly, her eyes somewhere on the floor as she clearly wrestles with the knowledge of her eyes and the conviction of her beliefs. She turns and walks slowly down the hall toward the second bedroom. She stops at the door, her hand against the latch but she does not open it.

“Betsy?” She does not answer him. Hamilton steps close to her once more and puts his hand upon her shoulder. “You are tired. Such a journey is long and arduous. Above stairs here is ill lit this time of day. No doubt these aspects what with seeing your dear husband once more created such a temporary vision to you.”

Betsy nods faintly. “Perhaps…”

Hamilton turns her by the shoulders and walks her back down the hall. “Perhaps in Philadelphia, once held by the British, you thought of your fears for me not so long past upon the battlefield?”

“A year past.” She turns her head up to him. “But it was not you.”

“No, I am right here.”

Betsy smiles faintly as they walk back into the bedroom. She sits on the edge of the bed, her hand fisting in the blankets. “It seemed so… it was quick to be sure and I could not tell the face. Even now it fades.”

“As it should, this vision being nothing more than your own fatigue, I am sure.”

She looks up at him again, a slight downturn to her lips. “You are sure?”

Hamilton smiles, ignores the chill up his spine and the vision burned into his own memory, tastes the lies on his tongue like grit of a lonely battlefield. “What else could it have been?”

Standing hear the closed door to their bedroom, Hamilton listens to the sounds of footsteps in the hall. Eliza talks to their new servant on the opposite side of the room as she pins Eliza into the stomacher of her dress. The two chatter about a hairdresser, something about curls and bonnets but Hamilton hears only the rhythmic step up and down the hall.

“Should you not be on your way?” Hamilton turns his head at Eliza’s question. She raises her eyebrows. “You spoke only last night on the need to arrive early so as to ensure your measure on the list for consideration today.”

“Yes.”

The footsteps stop directly outside the door of the room. Hamilton turns back, breathes in slowly, his hand fisted around the door handle. The wood of the floor creaks closer to the door, less like a footstep but just as audible. Hamilton’s eyes draw down to the floor before him. If he stays where he stands perhaps Eliza will not hear the sounds.

“I might look into that fabric for you today, Mrs. Hamilton,” the new woman says.

“Thank you, Josephine.”

The floor creaks again, heavy with the weight of a man. Hamilton presses his other hand to the door, drawing closer to listen. He sees the wood under his hand bow slightly out toward him as if something pushes from the other side and the wood were as malleable as clay. He cannot decide if what he sees is true or if his mind creates a vision for the sounds he fears to hear in daylight. 

“Alexander, what are you doing?” Hamilton jerks his head back around toward the two women now staring at him. Eliza frowns and presses her hands against her stomach. “Are you unwell?”

“No.”

A low moan begins behind the door, the wood pressing into Hamilton’s hip, the sound carrying like wind. The pitch changes toward a sob, like a name. Hamilton’s sees Eliza’s expression alter, her eyes widening, her lips forming to ask.

“You are quite right,” Hamilton says over loud. “I must leave for Congress. Good day.”

Hamilton turns the handle sharply, opens the door only as wide as needed and twists out into the hall. He pulls the door shut behind him ready to face the sounds, to draw them away. He stands only in an empty hallway, no waiting ghost, no accusing eyes.

Hamilton and Betsy eat dinner together in the parlor. Normally they would have a second course of beef or pork followed by some dessert. However, tonight they join a later dinner with several prominent Philadelphia families. Thus, they eat but a soup at home before their engagement. 

Betsy talks now about a letter from her father, news of baby Phillip and secondhand details from a letter received from Betsy’s sister Angelica. 

“My mother tells of Philip becoming more skilled at walking under his own power. She fears to lose him in the garden if she turns her head for but a moment such curiosity he has.” 

Hamilton, however, only half listens to her words. His attention lies with a persistent noise from above stairs. He hears the scrape of metal, a tap upon a hinge or the swish of air. The sound changes as he listens, the small taps growing into a steady drag. The metal scrapes, the sound heavy, so deep gouges in the flooring should line the hall.

“Angelica is expecting once again.”

The scrape of metal grows louder. Hamilton cannot tell if the sword moves closer or if the pressure increases. Will the line of a dragging sword weave its way all through the house until it hits Hamilton’s very feet? Will he scream as the sword slashes through his shoes, cutting him off at the ankles to bleed out on a wood floor instead of in a grassy field?

“Alexander, do you hear –”

“I hear you,” Hamilton interrupts her question. “I hear only you.”

Something crashes from above them, a metal clang and a creak of wood sounding like something heavy.

“My word!” Betsy says.

Hamilton stands up quickly. “I am sure it nothing.”

“But that…”

Hamilton walks away from her quickly and hurries up the stairs. He looks at the floor in the upper hall but sees no new marks or lines made by a pointed sword. He walks straight to the second room, somehow knowing what he may expect to find. 

Hamilton stands still in the doorway. His army trunk lies tipped over, the gap of the lid and the body of the trunk propped up on the floor in a perfect triangle which no natural upset could cause. The contents cover the whole of the room – letters in every corner, papers atop the other trunks and crates, a cockade in one window bay, even a letter caught in the crack of a windowpane.

“Laurens…” Hamilton whispers.

He walks into the room, picking up letters and papers as he goes. He moves quickly, fearing Betsy like to follow him. He finds a bottle of ink entirely spilled upon the floor. From where the bottle lies, a pair of footprints walk away toward the far wall of the room. Instead of growing fainter, as one might expect the prints to become, they grow darker, more red than black as Hamilton follows them in the dim light. Hamilton wants to touch the ink, to check and see if it smells of copper.

In the corner he sees what looks like fabric. He crouches down, holding the letters he retrieved against his chest with one hand. He picks up the torn fabric with his other. It is his green aide-de-camp riband sliced in half.

“Laurens…” Hamilton whispers again.

Laurens’ voice echoes behind him. _‘Forgotten in the past.’_

Hamilton shakes his head. He looks around the empty room as he stands. “You are wrong. I have not forgotten you.” He holds up the letters in his other hand. “Can you not see that?”

“Alexander?” Hamilton turns quickly to where Betsy stands in the door. She frowns, her eyes coasting around the disarray of the room. “What happened?”

Hamilton looks down at the riband in his hand then back up to her. “The trunk fell over.”

Betsy’s eyes shift around the room again and her lips purse. Though she nods as she walks away from the door, Hamilton knows she does not believe him.

Hamilton paces around his study, two papers of a drafted speech in hand.

“And though it be states which make up the whole of our union, it is the union which must persevere,” Hamilton mutters to himself, gesturing with the quill in his other hand.

“’And though it be states?’” Betsy peeks in the door of the study with a candle held in hand.

Hamilton looks up from the paper at her. “Not good enough?”

She rocks her head from side to side. “I suppose it depends, would you prefer something firmer on the importance of the states or do you wish to diminish them?”

“I speak to favor the union.”

“But men still hold more pride in their states. You cannot change that in one speech. Better to appease them with their state’s importance toward the union’s whole.”

Hamilton’s eyes roll upward. Then he looks back down at her and tips his quill like a quirk of the head. “The strengths and quality of each state create our perfect union and it is the union which must persevere?”

Betsy smiles wide. “Perfect.”

“Perfect.” Hamilton pivots and puts the papers down on his desk to write the new line.

“I am to bed,” Betsy says behind him. “Remember your own rest, my love.”

Hamilton smiles to himself as he crosses out the old phrase and writes the new phrase in the small gap between lines. “I shall not.” He places his quill into the ink well, blowing on the newly written words. “Though I find my writing somehow as restorative as sleep to another man.”

He turns around again with the speech in hand. “If I could only….” Hamilton trails off as he looks at the empty doorway.

A puff of what appears to be smoke or fog lies a few inches above the floor. Hamilton sniffs quickly but smells nothing burning. He walks toward the door and bends down to try and touch the mist. It swirls around his hand, real and not just a construct of his mind.

“Eliza?” Hamilton calls quietly.

He turns out into the hall where the low mist leads him, thicker around the baseboards as if Hamilton walks into the clouds. At the base of the stairs, Laurens stands surrounded by a thick shroud of smoky air. He holds the pommel of his sword, but it remains in its sheath. He stares up the steps. Hamilton follows the line of Laurens’ eye and just catches the light of Betsy’s candle as she turns into their bedroom, apparently unawares.

 _‘I remember,’_ Laurens says. His voice sounds faint, far away.

“Laurens…”

 _‘I remember you before her.’_ His head turns, slow and detached, as if his body cannot keep pace.

“I remember you as an honorable man,” Hamilton whispers as he steps closer through the mist.

Laurens cocks his head and sides steps away from the stairs into the space of hall directly in front of Hamilton. The fog follows him like a shadow or the wake of a ship across the ocean.

_‘I am not him.’_

Hamilton shakes his head. “You are, you are you… who else would you be?” Hamilton breathes in slowly, sees the fog rising higher around the two of them. “The riddles you speak in now are not you.”

_‘I am not her.’_

Hamilton frowns and shakes head again. “I would not think you are. I know you. Please, just listen to me, just… just be…”

 _‘I cannot be her.’_ Laurens’ hands rise, palms up, the shape of his body dragging like the fog tight around him.

“Cannot be what?” Hamilton hisses and fists his hands, crumpling the papers of his draft.

Laurens’ arms drop so quickly to his sides it appears as if they did not move at all. The fog turns darker as if a storm forms within clouds. Laurens starts to walk toward Hamilton.

Laurens’ lips move, slow and staccato. _‘Merciful.’_

Hamilton gasps as Laurens speeds forward – a Hurricane of the south. Hamilton’s arms fly up to protect his face as the fog and mist tears through him. 

Hamilton breathes in and out harshly, waiting. After several seconds of silence, he pulls his arms down and opens his eyes. The air appears empty, no swirling clouds, only the stairs to his left and the front door ahead of him. 

He looks down at the half-crumpled speech in his hand. The ink upon the page runs together, unreadable, and stains his hand black.

Hamilton walks in their small back garden. Elizabeth remains inside with their guests, Elias Boudinot and his wife, laughing over the last of their dinner. They ate for several hours until, despite the joy of the company, Hamilton begged a relief of just a few minutes for the cold winter air.

As Hamilton walks, he leaves footprints in the snow, barely an inch deep. Hedges line the brick walls shared by the adjoining houses on either side with a statue of a woman pouring from an amphora in the center. Hamilton would not have chosen the statue if he had decorated the house. The woman appears sad, lost, like she belongs in a cemetery. To break up the brick path around the garden, two stone plant holders with generic curling carving stand on either side of the statue. Neither one holds a plant presently, what with the season, and instead fill with days old snow. 

Hamilton pauses by one and pushes his fingers into the gathered snow. “Cold,” he whispers to himself.

 _‘How cold?’_ Hamilton sees mist swirling above his hand in the snow, morphing into shape. _‘I cannot feel it.’_

Hamilton watches the hand appear above his own, the buff cuff and gold buttons barely desirable as a different color than the translucent white of the hand. The hand moves slowly through the air until it lies atop Hamilton’s. 

“Can you feel me?” Hamilton whispers as he looks up into Laurens’ face. “I am warm,” Hamilton says even as his lungs tighten with the icy breaths he takes.

 _‘I feel nothing,’_ Laurens says, his eyes directed toward their hands. _‘Nothing.’_

“You’re touching me,” Hamilton says looking at their hands again. His fingers feel stiff, freezing into ice beneath Laurens’, but he does not flex them. He does not want to cause Laurens to disappear once more. “You are here. You can see, you can hear, can you not feel me too, please?”

 _‘Do I?’_ Hamilton looks up again and Laurens stares back into his eyes. _‘Am I here?’_

“Yes.” Hamilton feels the presence of Laurens’ hand like a current, like the cold of the snow seeps through his skin and follows the path of his blood. “You are looking at me.”

Laurens’ hand slides up Hamilton’s arm leaving ice crystals over Hamilton’s burnt red coat in his wake. His other hand rises up slowly toward Hamilton’s cheek.

 _‘I see you.’_ Laurens’ palm touches Hamilton’s cheek making Hamilton’s jaw ache. _‘I see her.’_

“She is…”

_‘She is – She is – is –’_

The wind begins to swirl around them, snow from the ground twisting up in a parody of snow fall.

“She is my wife, she is not the same as you, I said so many times…”

 _‘You said you loved me,’_ Laurens’ replies, his voice low like rocks grinding and less like the tone Hamilton remembers, less like the man who whispered in the dark.

Both of Laurens’ hands cup Hamilton’s cheeks. He stares into Hamilton’s eyes as his mouth curls up into a smile that is not a smile but a sneer and a threat.

_‘She is here – she is yours.’_

“Yes….” Hamilton tries to swallow, tries to pull away from the numb feeling permeating his entire body.

The wind speeds up, pulling snow from the flowerpots, shaking the hedges against the bricks. Hamilton hears a sound like whistling, like groaning, like a low moan turning slowly into agony. Though his lips do not move, Hamilton knows the sound comes from Laurens.

“Please,” Hamilton begs as his knees start to give way. “I need you too.”

Laurens pulls his hands abruptly away from Hamilton’s face. The wind screams and Hamilton falls to his knees in the snow. Hamilton tries to breathe in icy cold against the pain in his chest. He barely sees Laurens above him as the wind rushes.

 _‘You made your choice.’_ Laurens eyes appear darker, black as Betsy’s hair. He holds his arms out at his sides and Hamilton sees circles of dark blood around his nails. _‘And I made mine.’_

Laurens falls backward into the wind, the sound of gunshots louder than the moans, the pain, than the scream trying to crawl up out of Hamilton’s throat.

“Alexander?” Hamilton wrenches his head toward the house as the backdoor hits the wall. “My word but that was a gust of wind.” Eliza laughs then tilts her head. “What are you doing, Mr. Hamilton?”

Hamilton stands slowly as the wind all but dies away, the garden quiet and peaceful with new swirling patterns in the snow around him. Hamilton carefully brushes off the snow from his knees. “I was…”

Elizabeth purses her lips then gesture into the house. “Come inside from the cold, Alexander.”

Hamilton nods at her, walking back toward the house with his eyes on the ground checking for footprints other than his own.

James Madison paces behind Hamilton in the latter’s study, switching a pair of papers back and forth in his hand.

“But a five percent tax on imports.”

“Yes,” Hamilton says, writing across his page as slow as his fervor will allow him.

“For the purpose of allowing a sustainable revenue source,” Madison continues. “Separate of loans from foreign powers like those of the Netherlands, though happily secured.”

“We need not mention specifics or John Adams may attempt a speech of his own and claim all our time.”

Madison chuckles. “Indeed.” He clears his throat. “A sustainable revenues source, separate of loans from foreign powers and independent of that of the states in order to repay the debts of the war of independency.”

“Yes,” Hamilton agrees, swiveling his chair around – a Jeffersonian invention he rather enjoys. “But I think it better to make sure this a measure separate of the war debt. Yes, we aim to repay that debt but if we should specify this then a counter measure of some kind could be raised to cease such taxes once the war debt is repaid.”

“True.”

“We want this as a continued revenue for a unified, federal government, not a stopgap.”

Madison drops his arms to his sides. He nods as he fiddles with the edge of his blue coat. “You think to weigh again upon Congressional autonomy?”

Hamilton pushes errant hair from his face. “I think to tie the importance of public credit to national honor.”

Madison smiles. “Then we must surmount Rhode Island.”

Hamilton sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Yes, not a state I expected to be that of the most conflict against such a tax.”

Madison points at Hamilton with his papers. “They are the smallest state and one with a port city.”

Hamilton nods then glances over the edge of his glasses at the small clock upon the shelves behind Madison. “And we have belabored them hours enough now I think.”

Madison looks over his shoulder. “My, yes.” He turns back with a smile. “I wonder how your wife has managed to sleep with our speeches here.”

Hamilton shakes his head. “She is a woman of infinite patience and tolerance.”

“Yet, I am not a man of infinite energy. I will depart and we might meet again on this tomorrow.”

Hamilton stands from his chair, leaving his glasses on the desk then leads Madison out of the study and down the hall. “If any alternatives should come to your mind in the interim do not fail to make note.”

“I shall not.” Madison hands Hamilton the papers he carries as he dons his hat and cloak. “Nor you.”

“Never.”

Madison dips a short bow as he walks out into the evening darkness. Hamilton shuts the door behind Madison then walks down the hall back toward his study. He feels an ache in his hands as he walks and a chill at the nape of his neck. When he turns into the study doorway, Laurens waits for him inside.

_‘Writing, writing, always writing.’_

“Laurens.”

Laurens turns his head in his profile position. The cold seems to radiate off him toward Hamilton. He wonders if Laurens grows colder each time he appears because that means another day, another week, he lies dead in the ground.

_‘Writing on money, page after page, ink on your hands, staining your hands.’_

“You wrote as much as I,” Hamilton says as he walks into the room, closing the door behind him. Eliza is unlikely to wake now but he cannot be certain. 

_‘I am not stained black,’_ Laurens replies as Hamilton walks cautiously around him in a wide arc.

“No.” Hamilton breathes out as he looks at the red stain upon Laurens’ chest. “You are not.”

Hamilton moves slowly toward his desk. Laurens remains in the near certain of the room, more solid than cloud but less than human. Hamilton puts the papers from Madison down on his desk. Then he grips the back of the chair.

“I will always be writing now; it is the way we govern.”

_‘You where you wished to be.’_

“I did – I do. I want to preserve our union beyond the battles you fought.”

_‘We fought.’_

Hamilton smiles. “I remember.”

Laurens shifts, the shape of him altering as if to fade. _‘I fought – I fight. For you, I fight for…’_

“I do not want to fight now. I just… I just want you here, my Jack. Can we just not talk, like we used to?”

Laurens face turns back toward Hamilton, clearer in definition once more with the point of his chin, his slightly too big nose, the purse of his full lips, the disarray of his hair. _‘Talk…’_

Hamilton steps closer because maybe if he touches Laurens this time the anger will not rise and warmth will instead. Maybe Hamilton can pretend this ghost breathes instead of bleeds and speaks words of love instead of loss.

“You speak still, John, you can talk to me, your Alexander. It is just me here now.” 

Laurens dips his head and the feeling in the room changes. _‘It is not.’_

Hamilton stops walking with but two feet between them. “It is only I. I am here.”

_‘You are not here. Not mine. You are gone.’_

“No, Laurens…”

_‘You left. You always left.’_

“I did not. You chose to keep fighting, you chose to travel south. I chose to keep you. I wanted you still!”

 _‘No.’_ What color remains to Laurens’ features start to fade so he appears grayer by the second, his hair and skin and clothing, everything but the dark red marring his chest. _‘You left. Why did you leave? Why?’_

“I didn’t, you know that.” Hamilton puts up his hands placatingly as Laurens’ becomes less distinct. “Please, remember, try to remember that I was yours – I am.”

 _‘You would have always left.’_ Laurens shifts like a clap suddenly clear and solid almost as a living person. _‘I never had a chance at forever with you and you knew that.’_

Hamilton swallows hard and knows – as much as his heart denies it, as much as forever sounds like a dream – he knows that even in death Laurens speaks some truth, a truth neither of them could have denied. 

“I wanted to try,” Hamilton manages to whisper.

Laurens’ head knocks back and a sound like wailing fills the room, a scream upon the wind, crashing through trees and sinking ships. Hamilton clamps his hands over his ears at the shrill noise. He squints and tries to look at Laurens, to find a way to calm him once more. Then what smoke and air remains of Laurens spins around and flies straight into the bookcases against the wall. Two dozen books, the clock, two silhouettes, and dozens more papers fly off the shelves as if a hail storm. Hamilton jumps back to escape the barrage. One heavy book catches him hard in the knee. Hamilton hisses in pain and stumbles back into his chair, just barely sitting instead of falling. 

He breathes heavily, staring at the books and mess upon the floor, waiting to see if Laurens should return. After several minutes of silence, Hamilton stands up and reaches for the book which hit him. The spine reads ‘Metamorphoses’ by Ovid. The poem on the open page tells of Orpheus and Eurydice – a lover lost to hell and a failure to save them.

“I think for our next dinner with the Morrises I may need to read an essay on soldier’s pensions.” Eliza takes off her hat into the waiting hands of her lady’s maid. “Thank you, Josephine. I would not have though the issue so complicated.”

Hamilton closes the front door behind him, pulling his cloak off his shoulders. “It should not be, but government makes it so.”

“And are you not of that government now?” Eliza’s lips quirk up. “Might you not simplify it? After all, you should receive a pension yourself, should you not?”

Hamilton chuckles as Josephine takes his cloak. “I have less urgency for it than many men of our army.”

“Mr. Morris certainly seems to think on it with urgency.”

Hamilton turns toward the parlor taking the candle Josephine offers him. “It is an issue with further implications.”

“The bed is turned down ma’am,” Josephine says. “I will see to the fire there.”

“Thank you.” 

Hamilton puts the candle down on the mantel then turns to pour himself a glass of port. “I feel myself in a circular motion upon the issue, but if we might bring this issue of our army into the connection of the states, we can use it as a basis to strengthen our federal government. Without more power to the federal government we cannot preserve the union created. Money is at the forefront of most men’s minds and if we might use this tie to –”

“Yes, yes, Alexander, I have heard your speech before.”

Hamilton smiles as he unstoppers the decanter. “You said yourself on your need to learn more of soldier pensions.”

“Yes, and you deviate already upon the subject.” 

Hamilton looks up at her standing in the doorway to the parlor. She presses her hands to her cheeks, a gentle flush beneath her fingers no doubt from the cold outside. 

She pulls her hands back and rubs her palms together. “I must say, I do prefer visiting the Morrises with their house on the same street as ours. With a city so large as Philadelphia, I prefer the change to walking instead of endless cramped carriages.”

Hamilton looks down at his small glass as he pours the port. “Even with such cold you would prefer to walk?”

“Because I should have you beside me, my dear husband,” Eliza says fondly, “all to myself, holding my hand.”

Hamilton looks up again with a smile as he picks up his glass and turns toward Eliza. Laurens slides into view behind Eliza as soon as Hamilton takes one step forward. Laurens stares at Hamilton over Eliza’s shoulder with an expression Hamilton remembers vividly from Monmouth – a confusing battle with too much heat and yet another injury to Laurens’ war record; Laurens appears absolutely enraged.

“Alexander?”

The straight line of Laurens’ mouth pulls down into a sneer.

Eliza laughs. “Ah, my husband, do you fear for your wife in the cold? I am not so fragile as this.”

Laurens’ eyes narrow, growing more unreal and fiery with each word Eliza says. Hamilton cannot move, his hands motionless around the glass and his teeth clenched tight.

“Come now, Alexander,” Eliza says with a playful turn to her smile, holding out one hand toward him. “Let me kiss you now and prove how steadfast I am.”

Laurens’ teeth bare like an animal, his head tips up and his hands raise like claws ready to choke and tear and destroy.

Hamilton abruptly drops his glass, yanking himself out of his frozen his fear and leaps forward. “Don’t!”

Hamilton grasps Eliza’s arms and pulls her away from the doorway, spinning himself around in front of her. He holds her fast against his back, using as much of himself as he can to shield her, to hide her. He breathes fast and stares at the empty hall, dark as a void with their only candle behind him now.

“Alexander!”

He squeezes his fingers tight around her arms and does not let her go. He watches the darkness, waiting for Laurens, waiting for his wrath, for a sword to slash. The hall remains still and silent.

“Alexander, let go!”

Hamilton slowly relaxes his hands. Eliza whirs around him and stands in front of him once more. He looks over her shoulder quickly, but no vision reappears in the door.

“What are you doing?” Eliza asks. She turns her head to the door then back to him. “Alexander, what happened? What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

Eliza huffs. “I… nothing?” She shakes her head. “You cannot say ‘nothing.’ You pulled me with such force, you shouted as if I were in danger! What is it?”

Hamilton shakes his again, trying to look her in the face but his eyes keep slipping toward the dark hall. “I was wrong there… there is nothing, nothing now.”

_‘Alexander.’_

Hamilton lifts his head from the pile of letters in his trunk at the sound of his name. The trunk crowds in a corner of the room now, what with Betsy turning the space into a tearoom for more personal guests. Laurens sits in one of the pink fabric chairs, his hands grasping the wood arms.

“John.” Hamilton fists his hands around the old letters from General Washington – examples he intends to use for his committee on importation. 

“Are you…” He wants to ask if Laurens is angry, if he will scream or smash, if he remains the Laurens Hamilton wants him to be, if he will speak of love and touch Hamilton’s hand feeling warm instead of cold.

Instead Hamilton asks. “What is it?” As if were a normal day, as if they worked in an aide-de-camp office once more, as if Laurens were alive.

_‘I have a story for you.’_

Hamilton frowns, standing up from his crouch in front of the trunk. “A story?”

Laurens’ head tilts then his finger flex up away from the chair arms. _‘The story of how I died.’_

Hamilton swallows hard.

 _‘I was sick.’_ Laurens suddenly stands beside the chair – Hamilton did not see him move. _‘I had been forced to bed for two days.’_

Hamilton reaches back and plants his free hand against the wall. 

_‘But the British were sending foraging parties out along the Combahee River. I asked for men to man a redoubt and attack their retreat – no illness to stop me.’_

Hamilton breathes out heavily. “Of course, you… so rash.”

_‘We marched at but three in the morning, the sun not risen and little sleep before that, busy entertaining locals and their laughing daughters.’_

Hamilton’s teeth clench, a flash of anger at whatever women may have benefited from the charms of the man Hamilton called his while Hamilton remained too far away.

_‘But the enemy engaged us first – ambushed. One hundred and fifty British at least to only fifty infantrymen.’_

“Lord, Laurens…” Hamilton shakes his head, seeing the scene all too clearly, guessing at every move Laurens would have made like every time Hamilton knew of before. “You didn’t, you…”

_‘Charged.’_

“No…”

 _‘What is a sword without a battle in which to bear it?’_ Laurens stands beside Hamilton now. His hand presses against the wall near to Hamilton’s. The pale skin around his eyes appears red, as if with sickness. _‘What is a horse without a field to ride through?’_

“Stop…” Hamilton whispers. Laurens speaks more clear words and sentences now than any time Hamilton has seen him.

_‘I led the charge myself atop my horse – exposed, outnumbered – against but a meaningless foraging party, for another taste of honor, for all I had left before me without you.’_

“No.” Hamilton shakes his head hard. “Please, Laurens.” Hamilton pulls away from the wall, stumbles back toward the pair of chairs and hits the low tea table with his calf.

_‘I was the first to fall.’_

Hamilton watches the wound on Laurens’ chest grow brighter, the blackish red turning fresh and new and the rips in Laurens’ uniform becoming more pronounced. Hamilton drops the letters in his hand and clutches at his own chest. “You need not show me this. I mourn you enough!”

Laurens, however, keeps speaking, his tone flat and dark, his voice growing ragged as he speaks, as if the vision of the man lost perishes again before Hamilton. _‘I did not die immediately when I hit the ground.’_

“No.” Hamilton turns and hurries away out in the hall. “I will not listen.”

The sound of painful breath and horse hooves, gun shots and panicked, unintelligible voices follow after Hamilton. Laurens’ voice keeps pace right at his ear. _‘I lay upon the ground in pain as my men ran by, fleeing around me.’_

“No, stop!” Hamilton grabs the head of the banister and flings himself down the stairs, trying to outrun the sounds of battle and Laurens’ gasping voice.

_‘I could not stand again. I could only lie and wait as blood filled my lungs.’_

Hamilton trips over the final steps and nearly falls to his knees just as he catches himself with his hands against the front door. “Please, John, stop!” He rests his head against the wood and closes his eyes tightly. “Jack…. Please.”

_‘I could not speak. If I tried, only blood would come from my mouth, dripping down my cheeks.’_

Hamilton pulls his head back from the door again, turning wildly to see Laurens standing behind him, the picture of the words he speaks – blood flowing from his mouth, down his chin, staining the buff collar of his uniform and near the whole of his cravat. Hamilton feels his breath coming fast and hard. He tries to drag himself along the wall toward the parlor, anything to get further away, to erase the vision of Laurens dying.

_‘My men looted my body.’_

Hamilton gasps aloud and stumbles backward into the parlor. “No, they would not!”

_‘Why not take a good pair of boots from a rich, dead man? Why not run with his fine sword? Why not keep leather gloves when his hands no longer need them?’_

“Lord, John, please…” Hamilton hits one of the chairs near the fire grate and falls down into it. “Please, stop.”

 _‘Why not search his pockets? Take a gold time piece from a father they do not know and ignore a well-worn letter as they dig for more. Why notice when the letter falls to the earth to be trod upon, torn and soiled. Why care about a piece of paper or the words of love within read over and over by only one man, affections seen and felt and known by one man to another?’_ Laurens stands between Hamilton and the door – his hands wide at his side, boots gone, half his buttons missing, his pockets turned out – a looted body left alone upon the field. _‘Why leave a dead man anything?’_

A sob wrenches up from deep in Hamilton’s chest as Laurens looms – bloody and dirty and broken and as terrifying as a storm. “I beg you, Laurens, stop! I cannot bear it, please! I cannot bear it!”

 _‘My dear.’_ Laurens stands directly above Hamilton now, red blood on his pale lips. _‘I bore it alone – without you – alone.’_

Hamilton slips off the chair onto the floor with a heavy sob, clenches his eyes shut to try and block out the vision he will be unable to ever forget. 

When Hamilton opens his eyes again, he slides his hands up over his mouth as he stares at the empty room. He wants to run upstairs, pulls the stack of Laurens’ letters from his trunk and hold them close, safe and whole against his chest. However, Hamilton cannot stand now, as if he lies shot upon a southern battlefield, slowly bleeding out.

When Betsy returns home, she drops to her knees in front of Hamilton still in the parlor sitting upon the divan. She grasps his shaking hands where they lean on his forearms. She pleads with him to say what is wrong, but Hamilton cannot answer her.

Hamilton carries one stubby candle as he leaves his office to find sleep above stairs with his wife. Betsy retired to bed an hour past but, for once, Hamilton decides to sleep now at more decent an hour than midnight. He closes the study door, rolling his shoulders, then follows the path of the hall to the base of the stairs. Laurens waits for him upon the third step.

“Laurens,” Hamilton whispers.

Laurens tilts his head, his expression calm, no sign of the rage so often there in the months since Betsy’s arrival. Hamilton steps close so his toes touch the very base of the stairs. He tilts his head up at Laurens, even taller upon the stairs than his earthly height allowed him.

“Why do you haunt me?” Hamilton asks.

Laurens tilts his head in the opposite direction, the outline of his form growing less distinct.

“No, I do not ask you to leave.” Hamilton insists, holding out one hand placatingly. “I… I miss you so.”

Laurens’ voice floats around Hamilton even as his lips do not move. _‘Miss me.’_

“I do, I… I cannot help but… even in your violence, even as you frighten me, I want to see you.”

 _‘My dear,’_ Laurens says. _‘I follow you.’_

“Follow me?” Hamilton shakes his head. “I do not understand.”

Laurens hand shift, his palms turns up toward Hamilton. _‘I am and shall always be yours.’_

Hamilton breathes in deeply. “Is that why you haunt me? Because you loved me?”

_‘Because you love me.’_

“Do you mean I should have to stop loving you to put you to rest?” Hamilton shakes his head. “How could I do that? Will you haunt me forever?”

_‘You hear what you wish to hear.’_

“No,” Hamilton insists. “No, I want to hear the truth!”

_‘Truth is a battlefield. Truth is a wound that never closes. Truth is a lifeless heart.’_

“Stop, I know of your death!” Hamilton snaps.

Laurens smiles and the expression appears more sorrowful than he ever has in life or death. _‘Knowing is not acceptance.’_

Hamilton shoves his free hand into his hair, fisting his fingers around the thick locks, pulling a chunk free from his queue. He shakes his head and stares down at the wood. “I cannot understand your words, what this…” He pulls his head up sharply and waves his arm in the air. “What this has made you! I just want you; I want you back as you were!”

_‘You cannot have me.’_

“But I did! I did have you!” Hamilton moves up onto the first step. “I had you as mine for years.”

_‘And you believe you have me into death?’_

“You are here!”

_‘I am not here.’_

“Yes, yes you are! I say this over and over and I do not speak to myself. Betsy has seen you too. You are real!”

Laurens frowns. _‘And I am not what you chose.’_

“I chose her and I chose you!” Hamilton snaps then huffs out a heavy breath. “I chose you so many times. I choose you now. I choose to speak to you, to believe in you. I did not choose to love you, but I do not try to banish those feelings. I chose to embrace them and will not forsake them or you!” Hamilton reaches his hand out hovering inches away from Laurens’ bloody chest. “Your loss is a persistent wound. I feel this ache every day and seeing you pains it more, but I would rather that pain because at least then I see you, at least I have what is left of you!”

_‘I am not the man you love.’_

“Please, do not say that! You are right here with me!”

 _‘I am but a ghost of what I was.’_

Hamilton sucks in a sharp breath – Laurens has never called himself such before and even now it seems unclear, as more metaphor than truth. “But you are all I have left.”

_‘You have her’_

“I…”

_‘You have the one you chose.’_

“I told you I love you both, even now after you are gone.” His fists his hand around the candle and wants so very much to kiss Laurens, warm and real and alive.

_‘You cannot choose both.’_

“You do not listen to me!”

_‘I hear more than you say, and I know why I am here.’_

“You…” Hamilton stands up straighter and takes one more step up so he cannot move further with Laurens’ ghost right before him. “Then tell me why, tell me why you haunt me, tell me how I can fix this, how I can have you and not your anger. Tell me how I can keep you!”

Laurens’ face suddenly jerks down right beside Hamilton’s cheek. Hamilton feels no breath but a wave of icy cold instead.

_‘You cannot keep the dead.’_

Suddenly Hamilton flies backward off the stairs – hot wax burns his hand, a deep chill fills his lungs. Then Hamilton hits the wood floor hard and slides several feet to smash into the door. He gasps raggedly, trying to breathe as he rolls over onto his front. His tailbone stabs with pain and the world spins dizzyingly around him, so much he fears he may vomit. 

Hamilton tries to look up at the stairs once more, to ask Laurens why, to plead with him to be the sweet kind specter of before, to be the lost man Hamilton desperately wants. He sees nothing in the blackness of the hall, alone again.

High grass brushes against Hamilton’s hand as he walks through a field. The ground under his step sucks at his boots, trying to pull him down into the marsh. Mist hangs in the air around him smelling of ash and powder. Hamilton looks down at his chest, at buff cloth and gold buttons. He sees the blue upon his arms, fresh and unspoiled. He turns his head trying to peer through the mist. Water gurgles nearby, something small, not the ocean.

‘Run!’ A voice shouts from far away. ‘Too many of them!’

Hamilton feels men run past him on either side. He turns his head left and right but cannot see a single person. Even when the fabric of uniforms brushes his thigh and his hand, Hamilton sees no people. Hamilton keeps walking forward as the invisible soldiers retreat around him in the opposite direction. Fear grips his heart causing his hands to grow cold, yet he cannot stop walking forward.

The mist begins to clear before him. In the distance, he sees sagging trees and what must be the edge of a river. A horse whinnies behind him, the sound of its hooves fading. He hears distant shouts across the river. He knows the noise belongs to the enemy even if he cannot understand the words.

Suddenly a man stands two yards from Hamilton in the middle of the field. He faces the river, his coat rippling with a breeze Hamilton does not feel.

‘Laurens?’ Hamilton calls.

Hamilton wants to stop moving; he wants to turn back and run away with the other soldiers. His hands shake at his sides, but his feet move steadily forward toward his fate – toward Laurens’ fate.

‘Laurens?’ Hamilton calls again and his voice sounds far away, stolen with that wind now pulling Laurens’ hair completely free from its queue.

Laurens turns his head slowly, his hair catching around his face so at first Hamilton only sees his eyes. His eyes appear more dead than they ever have before, in every vision, in every ghostly shape they have never appeared so blank.

‘Alexander.’

‘Is this what you told me?’ Hamilton asks. ‘Is this your…’

‘This is where I am,’ Laurens replies.

He turns further so Hamilton sees the wound upon his chest, the blood still running fresh and new. Tears mar his uniform, buttons missing, his epaulets gone, no sword at his side. If the grass did not obscure his feet Hamilton knows he would see no boots.

‘I don’t want to see this,’ Hamilton pleads but his words barely carry even to his own ears.

Laurens’ chin tips up, his eyes closed. Hamilton thinks perhaps he prays. Then he looks down toward Hamilton once more.

‘I missed you,’ He smiles, wistful and fond and so very sorrowful. ‘I missed you so much.’

‘When?’ Hamilton asks even though he does not want to, even though he already knows, already fears the answer.

‘When I died.’ Laurens’ eyes turn dark, his skin starts to flake off his face and his uniform turns to tatters. ‘I missed you when I died alone.’

‘Stop!’

‘I missed you when you left me alone.’ 

Laurens’ coat falls from his body in pieces. He holds up his arms, his shirt torn with holes, the skin gray and bruised with decay beneath.

‘Not again, please stop!’ Hamilton begs.

Laurens runs his nails down his one arm leaving deep red claw marks behind. 

‘I missed you as you lay with her.’

Laurens’ mouth opens wide and screaming fills Hamilton’s ears.

Hamilton jolts up in bed breathing hard and fast, his whole body frozen as if he lay outside in the snow and the screaming still sounds loud and shrill. Hamilton shakes his head to dislodge the sound, but it keeps ringing in his ears. The screams change to sobs and Hamilton turns to Betsy sitting up beside him.

“Alexander, oh god…”

He grasps her hands and stares down at the deep bloody scratches on her one arm. 

“Oh, Betsy!” He tries to put his hand over the wounds to stop any blood, but she cries out in pain when he touches her. Hamilton yanks his hand back. “We must get you a cloth, we must stop the bleeding.”

“No, please!” Betsy squeezes his hands hard as he tries to stand. “Alexander, tell me, what is happening?” She looks deep into his eyes with a fear he feels within his own heart. “It’s those sounds, it is what I saw, isn’t it? Tell me!”

Hamilton squeezes her hands back and he nods. “Yes, I’m sorry.” He swallows then breathes in deeply. “But I am going to stop it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you haven't seen it already, my historical lams fiction novel is out now: [Duty and Inclination](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08C78WHB2)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alexander Hamilton learns to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still rough in here and I am out to break all your hearts. You're welcome.

Hamilton stands on the front stoop watching as Eliza’s girl, Josephine, counts hat boxes. The carriage driver near her strains against the straps at the back of the carriage as he ties down Eliza’s two trunks.

“Alexander?”

Hamilton turns his head to Eliza now standing beside him on the stoop. “Eliza.”

She presses her lips together as she turns her hat around in her hands several times. “Is this what you want?”

Hamilton turns away. “It is what is best.”

Eliza places her hat on her head. “But it is what you want?”

Hamilton twists his head back around and hisses. “Do you think I should wish to send you away?”

Eliza’s eyes shift toward where the servants work then back to him. “I am your wife.” Hamilton sighs and turns back around. “I should be by your side.”

“I cannot protect you from this,” Hamilton whispers.

“Then do not protect me.” Eliza grips his arm. “Let me fight with you.”

Hamilton scoffs. “Fight?”

“Yes.” She places her other hand atop the one which holds his arm. “This is not your battlefields of sword and gun, this is –”

“This is what?” He turns to her again, his voice fast and hushed. “This is other worldly, Eliza. This is not something you can fight any more than I.”

Eliza squeezes his arm. “God will listen to our prayers.”

Hamilton scoffs again and shakes his head “If God listens to all prayers then my life should have had far less hardship.”

“Alexander,” Eliza gasps. “Do not speak such blasphemy. God takes care of his children that are strong in their belief.” 

“He also helps those who help themselves,” Hamilton counters.

Eliza drops her hands. “This spirit is not your doing.”

“You do not know that.”

Eliza frowns. “I… I do not understand.”

Hamilton breathes in slowly and closes his eyes. He sees Laurens close to him, Hamilton’s back against a heavy wood door. He remembers the handle of the door digging into his side as Laurens pressed him against the wood with kisses. Hamilton hardly noticed at the time with his hands in Laurens’ hair. He still remembers how Laurens tasted like the sea – impossible as that could be with the two of them indoors and inland – yet Laurens made him think of calm water, fresh sea air and the open expanse of freedom before him. Laurens whispered against Hamilton’s lips, back lit from the window behind him but close enough to see the sky in his eyes, ‘my dear boy.’

“Maybe this is punishment,” Hamilton whispers, somehow softer even, as soft as Laurens’ voice in his memory. “Maybe it is a punishment for our sin.”

Laurens would say, in Hamilton’s memory, in his dreams, ‘It cannot be a sin to love you.’

“God should not punish what is done out of love.”

Hamilton’s eyes snap open at Eliza’s words. He stares at her earnest expression, his throat tight, unable to breathe.

“He should know your actions were in the service of your country,” Eliza continues. “Your love for your country, its freedom, is what led you to fight for it. God knows this and will forgive actions in battle.”

Hamilton breathes in deeply and blows out the air almost immediately, his shoulders slumping. “Oh, Eliza…”

“Now you fight for your own house, our house.”

“Philadelphia is but a –”

“Alexander, you know my meaning!”

“Yes, and I know my duty.” Eliza opens her mouth, but Hamilton waves a hand. “I know my duty as a husband as the head of this house.”

“A marriage is a partnership. I would not leave you alone to such horrors.”

“But you should also listen as I say.”

Eliza sighs and fists her hands against her bosom. “Alex…”

“No, Eliza. Please listen to me, it is better you return to Albany. It is my duty as a husband to protect you, just as it is your duty as a wife obey your husband. I must finish my term with Congress, and I must master this spirit.”

“How?” Eliza’s eyes tick back to the open door beside them and the empty hall within. “How might you do so?”

Hamilton’s jaw clenches but he merely shakes his head. “Allow me to do this duty first.” He places his hand gently over the visible bandage on her arm. “Of protecting my wife.”

Eliza’s lips purse, her hands fist tight together then she visible relaxes. She reaches up and ties the ribbon of her bonnet tight at the back of her head. She pulls her hands down then folds them one arm over the other across her midsection. “As you wish, Mr. Hamilton.”

Hamilton puts his hands over her crossed arms. “Thank you, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“Promise you will come back to me.” She tilts up her chin. “Soon.”

“I will.”

Eliza nods sharply then turns out of their minor embrace. She walks down the two steps up to Josephine. The two women talk quietly, the carriage driver ready in his seat. Hamilton watches them, his hands clasped hard behind his back now, as Josephine helps Eliza into the carriage. She glances up at him from the window, a hesitant smile to her lips. Hamilton nods at her then she disappears into the dark of the cab.

Hamilton watches the carriage as it pulls away, the warming spring air at his front and the chill from the open door at his back.

Hamilton sits at a small table in the parlor, his dinner laid out before him. Josephine, who stayed on with Hamilton at Eliza’s request, served him both the soup and meat course together so he could dismiss her for the evening. Though he sits by himself he does not plan nor expect to eat alone. He picks up the spoon from his soup, gently circling the liquid. His eyes shift around the room instead of focusing on his food. He does not bother to ask, he merely waits. Hamilton sips the soup then dips the spoon in again, still glancing left and right. After his third mouthful of soup, Laurens sits in the empty chair across from him.

“She is gone,” Hamilton says, putting the spoon down between the bowl and his plate of pork. “It is but you and I again.”

_‘No.’_

“Yes, I sent her away.” Hamilton gestures to the empty room. “Surely you can see that.”

_‘No.’_

Hamilton shakes his head. “What do you mean by, no? Hmm?” Hamilton grits his teeth. “You hurt her.”

Laurens cocks his head. _‘Hurt. I?’_

“Do you play coy?” Hamilton grips the table. “You were never coy, not like this.”

Laurens shifts his head again, strands of his hair fluttering with the motion. _‘Who is hurt now?’_

Hamilton swallows. “You are dead, you cannot hurt any longer. You hurt her; I saw her arm!”

_‘Those on the battlefield may be harmed.’_

Hamilton breathes in sharply. “We are not in a war, not you and I, not you and her!”

Laurens’ eyes widen and the bowl of soup flies off the table to smash against the wall beside the door. Hamilton remains stiff and still, staring at Laurens.

“You kept saying I had to choose,” Hamilton says quietly, “I have chosen.”

Laurens’ voice rumbles deep, like wagon wheels over jutting rock. _‘You have not.’_

“I have. I have chosen my wife!”

_‘Yet you sit here.’_

“I…” Hamilton sits back in his chair. “I serve in Congress. I cannot leave Philadelphia yet.”

_‘You sit here.’_

“Would you rather I leave?” Hamilton hears a crack in his voice then shakes his head, fisting his hands on his thighs. “And would you not follow even if I should have ridden away with my wife? You appeared in Albany. I think a city does not bind you.”

_‘You have chosen your binding.’_

“I do not understand!” Hamilton snaps. “I… I have given you kind words. I have sent my wife away. What else do you ask? It was she that rose your anger.”

_‘She did not bring me here.’_

Hamilton sighs. “But you are here still and can you not…” His voice falls back again, and he leans over the table, closer to the shifting specter of uniform and wounds. “Can you not return to the quiet words and gentle apparition you first were? Can I not have my Laurens?”

_‘Your Laurens is dead.’_

“You have no reason for anger without her here, no reason to rage!” The plate flips off the table and smashes on the floor. Hamilton shakes his head again. “It was you before, I know it was. Can you not try? Can you not be the man I had?”

 _‘Your Laurens,’_ Laurens repeats, his form fading briefly before he solidifies into something almost real. _‘Is dead.’_

Hamilton breathes in freezing air and clenches his teeth. “I know that. I know it every day, but you are still here.”

Laurens leans forward over the table, Hamilton nearly rising from his chair to meet him. Cool fingers touch Hamilton’s cheek and he smells smoke. Laurens’ lips press light against Hamilton’s. Smoke flows into Hamilton’s mouth, burning his throat. Laurens’ lips taste like earth and old blood, like fear.

_‘You sit here. Your Laurens is dead. You choose death.’_

“Live…” Hamilton tries to gasp. He can barely breathe from the fire in his lungs. “I… choose to… live.”

A force knocks Hamilton back in his chair just as the chair in front of Hamilton falls backward, knocking down against the fire grate.

Laurens’ voice says, _‘Not yet.’_

“The measure will now be brought to a vote,” President Boudinot says. He picks up the piece of paper on his desk and reads. “In regards to the disbanding of the Continental Army in consideration of the near summation of the conflict of the war of independency; all those in favor?”

Hamilton immediately raises his hand. He glances from left to right, attempting to ascertain the numbers while keeping his professional composure. 

“Those opposed?” President Boudinot asks.

Hamilton drops his arm again. He tilts his head to the right. A smile spreads on his face at the obviously less votes.

“The ayes have it,” President Boudinot says then pounds his gavel once. “The Continental Army shall be disbanded with allowances for those enlisted men with fixed terms to remain in smaller garrisons until the final removal of British troops.” Boudinot stands up and nods to the room. “Thank you, gentlemen, I think we can disband ourselves for the day.”

Chatter begins around the room along with the scrape of chairs. Hamilton scoops up his portfolio and cuts a path across the room to Madison.

“This may pose a problem,” Madison says before Hamilton may speak.

“How so?” Hamilton says as they move together toward the chamber exit.

“With the disbandment of the army the focus of its needs will drop dramatically and, as we had thought to use if as one of our focus points…”

Hamilton shakes his head. “Hardly! With the army’s disbandment the issue of soldier pensions and pay will immediately need addressing. It cannot be put off with, ‘but one more month,’ as the men serve. Soldiers will expect and deserve their pay now with the summation of their service.”

Madison raises his eyebrows as they shift into the hall. “True.”

“But they will have less power to organize.” Hamilton turns his head to R. Morris beside them now. “With no Captains to take charge and rally men, will there be enough power behind individual petitions for soldiers that do not receive monies owed?”

“You think it should get to this point?” Madison asks.

“I am in charge of such finances.” R. Morris gestures behind them at the chamber. “I think with the amount of legislation, issues and debate, it is easy to forget when one does not have guns at your door.”

Madison sighs. “They did not bring their guns.”

“All the most reason that Congress should wish an answer to the issue faster. With the army disbanded they will wish to wrap up any open matters in regards to soldier service.” Hamilton grips the handle of the front door and yanks it open. “Perfect for our measures on methods of taxation to fulfill these soldier debts and then that of the whole nation.”

“I still think it a concern,” Madison continues as they step out into the light of the afternoon. “If Congress could vote against General Washington’s request for a smaller peace time army, then why should not many of those same men vote against adequate money collection for soldiers they do not know?”

“Or soldier families,” R. Morris adds. “What of those wives and children owed the same, another step more removed, despite the duty served by their men.”

Hamilton looks out at the street, a smile forming on his face. “We shall make them see.” He turns his head to the two men. “But I must share this good news, regardless of further implications now.”

Hamilton turns and starts to march quickly toward his street and home.

“Share with whom?” R. Morris calls after him.

Hamilton, however, does not turn back. He walks briskly, but a few steps away from a run. He grips tight to his portfolio and does not even realize until he reaches his front door that he left his walking stick at Congress. He opens his front door, however, and jumps inside.

“Laurens?” Hamilton drops his portfolio on the hall table, nearly upsetting the calling card dish. “Laurens?”

He pulls off his hat and attempts to place it on the table as well. He just misses and his hat falls to the floor. Hamilton pays it no mind but strides to the parlor peeking inside. When he sees only chairs and sideboards, he moves away again down the hall to his study.

“Laurens?” He looks around at the books and desk. “Laurens, come now, I have news!”

He turns and walks back into the hall, calling as if it were a normal action, as if he called for Eliza or a servant or someone alive. “Laurens, please, answer me!”

Hamilton climbs the stairs, glancing behind himself then up again back and forth. “The army has been disbanded. The measure just passed in Congress this afternoon. The army is disbanded as peace is negotiated; the war is all but complete!” Hamilton stops at the top of the stairs, breathing fast. “Disbanded, I say. The army is disbanded.”

He leans in the bedroom door finding another empty room. He turns around to face the house again. “Laurens, this means your duty is over.” He breathes in deeply to calm himself. He smiles wide despite the lump in his throat and tears threatening his eyes. “Your duty is fulfilled.”

_‘My duty is to fight.’_

Hamilton breathes in sharply and moves back to the head of the stairs. Laurens stands in the front hall near the foot of the steps. He looks up at Hamilton, his outline faint in what Hamilton could almost have once called a trick of the light.

“The war is over now,” Hamilton insists, “your duty is over.”

_‘My duty lies with me.’_

Hamilton grips the banister. “Your duty was to serve, and you did. With the army disbanded I thought…”

_‘You thought of peace.’_

“I thought of peace for you.”

Laurens suddenly stands in the middle of the stairs, not close enough to touch Hamilton yet. 

_‘Duty is not meant for peace.’_

“You deserve peace,” Hamilton insists. “I should still not want to… to lose you, but is not death enough?” Hamilton swallows back the feeling in his throat. “Can not a soldier move on?”

_‘Soldiers never stop fighting, the field lives in us.’_

Hamilton’s voice cracks. “But you are not alive.”

Laurens tilts his head. _‘I live.’_

“You…” Hamilton blows out a breath of air. “Don’t say… you are gone and I know this and you know, you must know… Laurens, I only want…”

 _‘I live as I die,’_ Laurens says as the blood on his chest grows darker. _‘I fight as I fall.’_

“Stop…”

Laurens suddenly appears beside Hamilton on the upper landing. He lies on the floor, dirt surrounding him, the blood flowing from the wound on his chest – sharper and clearer than any part of him.

Hamilton hears Laurens’ voice though his lips do not move. _‘What is a soldier’s duty but to die?’_

“Stop,” Hamilton says backing away from the sight. “I try to tell you that is enough! You have done enough; your duty is done. Can that not be why you remain?”

Blood pools under Laurens on the floor, expanding slowly toward Hamilton’s shoes. Laurens stares up toward the ceiling more like a corpse than ghost, rot starting to show in the skin of his hands and face.

 _‘Your duty is to live.’_ Laurens’ voice says from somewhere around them

“Then let me live!” Hamilton shouts. “Do not show me this. What in your duty calls for you to bring so much pain to one who loved you?”

_‘Love is not a duty; it is a choice.’_

Hamilton’s falls to a whisper. “I did not choose to love you.”

_‘You chose your duty and I chose mine.’_

The rot of Laurens’ face spreads, his lips pulling back from his teeth, his eyes sinking into his skull as his voice circles around and around Hamilton until Hamilton starts screaming, his knees hitting the wood of the floor. Hamilton puts his hands over his face, wet with Laurens’ blood. He screams as he hears the sound of bone breaking, of Laurens moaning.

“Stop!” Hamilton cries through his hands. “Please, Laurens, stop, let me go!”

_‘Do your duty. Let me go.’_

Hamilton’s hands hit the wood of the floor as if a gun shot hit him in the back. He stares at the empty wood floor, a scratch from when the bed was moved in. Hamilton breathes deeply in and out. He turns one palm up and sees nothing upon his hand. He still feels the blood there.

Hamilton rummages through his army trunk upstairs in his absent wife’s tearoom, not used for such since her departure. His stack of Laurens’ letters sits behind him on the floor while numerous other letters pile in the lid of the trunk, out of his way.

“There must be something…” Hamilton mutters to himself.

He opens a small, tin box, nothing inside but some short pencils and a piece of flint. He shuts the box again.

“Not my wife… not the army…”

Hamilton picks up a three-corner hat from the far side of the trunk. He leans back on his heels staring at the hat. Laurens’ purchased it for him in Philadelphia when he was under parole after the capture of Charles Town. Unlike most of his black hats to match any color of outfit, this hat is a pale brown with almost a tint of green. Hamilton stands up and puts the hat on his head. He wore it perhaps twice since receiving it, the color not being that of the army, and then simply forgetfulness to owning it. It fits perfectly despite Hamilton’s absence for sizing when it was purchased.

Hamilton leans down and picks up the stack of letters from Laurens. He runs a hand along the brim of the hat trying to think, trying to remember the war, all their private moments, trying to decide what keeps Laurens here and what drives him mad.

_‘It looks well upon you.’_

Hamilton turns toward the doorway where Laurens stands, barely discernible this time, more an outline than a figure.

“Have you not seen me wear it?”

_‘I saw you in war, not life.’_

“The war was our life.”

_‘Not now.’_

“No.” Hamilton places the letters upon the small table between the chairs then walks toward the pale shape of Laurens. He takes the hat off his head and holds it out between them. “Do you recall your thoughts on sending me this? You said, when I asked, it should look well with the red of my hair.”

Hamilton walks toward Laurens. “You were here, in Philadelphia, when we had been apart the longest.”

Laurens shifts like a blink so he stands nearer the windows within the room. _‘A gift.’_

“Yes, yes it was. It arrived at headquarters and I…” Hamilton laughs breathily. “I was confused as to why you would send it and the note was little help.”

_‘A goodbye.’_

“But it wasn’t a goodbye,” Hamilton insists gesturing with the hat. “That was only your melancholy, you saw me again, you knew my affection still.” He pulls the hat back against his chest as he stares through Laurens to the sunny window behind him. It seems wrong almost to see Laurens in the daylight. “Even after Eliza, it was not a goodbye.”

_‘It was the last.’_

Hamilton’s jaw clenches. “The last gift you gave me.”

_‘A goodbye.’_

Hamilton shakes his head. He looks down at the hat, still stiff from lack of use. He pulls his head up again and holds up the hat. “Is that why? Are you tied to this last memory of our relationship, to your own care and love for me? Is this hat some anchor to you?”

Laurens’ form darkens, solidifying more into some gray, cloudy vision. _‘You do not understand.’_

“I understand something keeps you here, something drives you mad in this form!”

A sounds cracks like thunder or a gun shot or something shattering. _‘You!’_

“I do not drive you mad!” Hamilton shouts, heedless of the noise or the smoke starting to roll from Laurens’ feet. “I try to save you!”

_‘You do not understand!’_

“I can think of no other thing.” Hamilton fists his hands around his hat. “Is this that simple? A stupid hat I never wore which you sent me in anger at my marriage? It has to be something because I have given you everything else!”

_‘No.’_

“I have tried patience and calm and words and even sending away my wife. Do you want my heart upon a plate? You have already broken it when you died.”

_‘You do not understand. You lie.’_

The smoke swirls higher now, surrounding them both.

“I ask you to tell me what to do!” Hamilton coughs, Laurens standing clear even as the rest of the room grows hazy. “You cannot stay here. I cannot stay here, as much as I should miss you.”

 _‘You lie and lie and lie.’_ Laurens hands rise high near his head and the smoke grows thicker, so Hamilton coughs again and barely breathes. _‘You know but you will not see, you know what remains here.’_

“Laurens…” Hamilton tries to suck in air but breathes only smoke. He tries to cough, to move backward but his throat tightens as if hands clasp around it. “Joh… Jack….”

A shrill wail fills the room, Laurens’ face a blur of smoke and rage – Hamilton cannot tell if it moves or disappears, but his face looks less human than he ever has. Hamilton grasps at his throat with one hand, the hat still clenched in the other. The sound of screaming bounces off the walls even as the shrill wail continues, neither sound like Laurens’ voice but can be from nothing else.

“Jack… Please…” Hamilton gasps, unable to breathe, choking with pressure on his throat and tears down his face from the smoke. “Please…. You…” He tries to gasp again and his knees start to give. “You are killing me.”

The smoke disappears abruptly and the pressure around Hamilton’s neck snaps back as if someone yanked it away. Hamilton sucks in a harsh breath, like scratching sand, and holds himself up with both hands on his legs. After two deep breaths, he manages to lift his head up. Laurens still stands before him, paler, more real than many times, his expression like fearful surprise. Yet what shocks Hamilton most is the absence of blood on Laurens’ uniform.

Laurens’ eyes drag to Hamilton. _‘I don’t want to hurt you.’_ The sound of his voice brings up every memory Hamilton recollects of Laurens saying I love you. _‘But I am losing.’_

Hamilton shakes his head. “Losing?”

_‘Myself.’_

Hamilton breathes in deeply, straightening up. “Then tell me how to let you rest.”

Laurens steps forward, grabs Hamilton by the edges of his coat – and he seems real, solid, alive – then shoves Hamilton backward toward the door. _‘Run!’_

Hamilton stares in confusion. Then the blackness starts to fill Laurens’ form again, blood floods the white of his waistcoat and his mouth widens into a shriek. Hamilton twists around then runs out the door. He still clutches the brown hat as he reaches the stairs, the screams echoing like cannon blasts. He runs down the stairs, runs out of the front door and into the afternoon streets. He runs until he falls on brick and no longer hears the screams echoing in his ears.

“Morris – Robert, you cannot resign.”

Morris scoffs. “I have written it and handed it over to Congress, I very much can do so.”

Hamilton shakes his head and crosses his arms. “You cannot do this to your country.”

Morris scoffs again as he paces over to Hamilton’s desk, glancing disinterestedly at the papers upon it. “You say this as if no other could fill the position of Superintendent of Finance. Is it not enough I serve in Congress but this position as well, one that is as much a lark as it is a headache?”

“Someone must!”

“Then someone else!” Morris snaps back at Hamilton. “I will not be a Minster of Injustice.”

Hamilton holds up the resignation letter in his hand. “Clever turn of phrase.”

“It is apt.”

“I understand your frustration with the accumulation of debt and the States seeming reluctance to pay what they owe themselves and for the nation but –”

“And the loss of our tariff proposal,” Morris interrupts. He turns his eyes upon Hamilton and tugs at the base of his gray waistcoat, his topcoat laid somewhere about now. “You yourself worked tirelessly upon writing it and attempting its passage.”

“And Madison.”

Morris sighs. “All the more reason for my frustration at the effort and time wasted of multiple men.”

“I simply say that just because these efforts failed does not mean we might not find another method and your purpose, your role as superintendent, must still be filled to see these measures through to the betterment of our country.”

Morris looks away at the bookcases against the one wall, worrying his lip with his top teeth. Hamilton watches him, hoping to use the silence for his words to weigh upon Morris. He sees a flicker of movement near the door, what looks to be boots and a sword. Hamilton sucks in a sharp breath.

“No.” Morris turns back to Hamilton. “I cannot be party to the states desire to rack up debt as if it should have no future affect upon their own, and our nation’s, economies. Why put myself through the embarrassment and hassle of a position which bears no fruit?”

Hamilton moves closer to Morris, keeping Morris’ back to the door. “It has not born fruit, as you say, yet but that does not mean our efforts will always be in vain.”

“I know your thoughts, Hamilton,” Morris insists. “You are as frustrated as I!”

Hamilton nods, “Yes, that is true.”

A sound like footsteps comes from out in the hall and Hamilton sees the air grow hazy.

“Then why do you try to convince me of remaining in a position you know yourself to be worthless?”

“I do not say worthless.”

A low moaning sound begins somewhere behind Morris, the footsteps louder as though climbing the stairs. Morris begins to frown, his eyes shifting to the side.

“I say,” Hamilton says louder so Morris’ eyes tick back to Hamilton, “that if you should resign, they may simply appoint another man, one less qualified.”

Morris raises both eyebrows. “Or more so.”

“Regardless of qualification even, the importance lies in an understanding of what economic health may gain our nation and the intricacies of how this might be accomplished. You are central to this discussion.” 

Another sound comes from above stairs like a chair or table or a body falling down.

“What is…”

Hamilton continues talking over Morris and the sounds above. “You have been central to our attempts to reduce the overall national debt, you secured needed loans to pay our soldiers and then stopped Congress endlessly requesting loans so we were not plunged so deeply into debt that we would be unable to recover.” 

Another sound like a cry of pain, like gunshots filters down, closer now and Morris’ expression turns into concern. Hamilton however continues his speech. “Another man in your position, in this role, might attempt to rely on more loans or worse and begin to inflate and devalue our dollar as we suffered through but years before now. Would you take this risk when you can still carry on? You must remain in this position with the strength you have shown it before.”

“Do you hear that?” Morris finally asks.

“Hear?” Hamilton says with an overly bright smile.

“I am certain I hear a noise from above, like…”

“Ah.” Hamilton laughs and he hears the false tone even as he attempts not to sound so. “I am afraid I have had some trouble with vermin.”

“That is…”

“Yes, quite an annoyance but not something I am unable to surmount. Now, Morris, please say you will stay as our Superintendent of Finance, please say you will remain with me to keep this important work moving forward as it should.”

Morris sighs, the noise covering the clink of metal Hamilton hears from what might be the stairs. “I concede, Hamilton. I shall remain.”

“Wonderful!” Hamilton says loudly. He then grips Morris shoulder and turns him about, leading him out of the study. He places himself on the side closer to the stairs, grabbing Morris’ coat off of a chair as they walk. “And now this is decided, I shall set you free.”

“Free?”

“You need not stay longer as I would then be bound to bring up more of those issues which tire you so and I would not want to inadvertently change your mind back once more.”

“Ah.”

A crash like splintering wood and screaming pain comes from above, a smell like gunpowder wafting down toward them. Morris’ eyes grown wide in alarm.

Hamilton smiles, not looking away from Morris’ face. “And I must attend to matters of my house.”

Morris nods slowly. “I see….”

Hamilton opens the front door, patting Morris’ arm. “Thank you again, Morris, you are a good man.”

He then all but shoves Morris out the door and slams it behind him. He whirls around to face the house, breathing in deeply through his nose. “What is it you wish of me, Laurens?” Hamilton snaps upward. “I attempt to live my life, to serve our country as you did! Do you try to scare Morris away to have me alone or do you attempt to embarrass me with your rattles and crashes?”

Laurens voice wafts from somewhere to his right. _‘You must listen.’_

“I listen well enough and I hear nothing coherent in return only phantasm and riddles and no solution. Do you but wish to cause me pain?”

 _‘Whose pain?’_ Hamilton sees Laurens at the top of the stairs now, his sword in hand. _‘Soldiers denied or soldier died?’_

“Ha.” Hamilton puts his hands on his hips. “You find such humor in my work and your death or do you try to harm me once more with mere words with time? You have done more so before!”

_‘You should not ask.’_

“Why? Is that what you wish?” Hamilton marches right up to the base of the stairs. “Is it revenge? Do you wish to harm me because I lived and you died? Because I chose a wife? Because you feel I hurt you and you want to hurt me?”

_‘Revenge…’_

“Yes! I have tried compassion, I have tried love, I have asked you and yet you grow only more angry, more fearsome and now I am angry too!” 

_‘You say anger…’_

“Yes!” Hamilton pivots backward, picks up the calling card dish on the small table by the front door. He turns about and heaves the metal dish up the stairs toward Laurens. The dish sails straight through the gray specter of Laurens and clatters on the floor. “If you want revenge then take it! I stand here!”

A cry fills the house as Laurens rushes down the stairs like the clatter of a carriage over rough ground, indistinct and dashing, his form appearing then reappearing and his face blurred into blackness.

 _‘You do not understand,’_ Laurens screams as he lands on the step above Hamilton.

“Then make me!”

Hamilton turns back to the front door and grabs the corner of the table there with one hand. He skids it across the floor toward himself, grabs one leg and flings in inelegantly toward Laurens’ apparition on the bottom stair. The table hits the banister with a loud crack. Then Laurens’ sword swings and slices through the tabletop as if it were cloth as it ricochets toward him. Hamilton’s eyes widen. Dark smoke radiates off of Laurens as he brings his sword down once more in front of him, the sharp edge of the blade toward Hamilton.

Hamilton thinks of his army sword packed away within its scabbard up in Albany. “Shit.”

Hamilton runs down the hall toward the rear door of the house. Barely grabbing the handle as he hits the door, Hamilton flings it open and falls into the garden. He catches a glimpse of Laurens behind him, mouth elongated, eyes wide, visage dark black with blood down his chest and soaking his cuffs where it pours from his hands around his sword hilt. 

Hamilton’s feet crunch over stone as he runs toward the detached kitchen. Somehow, Hamilton’s mind catches up with his feet now as he remembers superstitions about cemeteries always needing fences of iron to keep the spirits within. It is only when he reaches the kitchen door that he recalls the iron fire pokers beside the parlor fire grate. Then Hamilton pulls open the kitchen door and nearly trips over an earthen pot full of water. He looks around wildly – an iron hook rooted in the brick, another which swings over the fire holding a pot.

“Iron pot,” Hamilton says aloud. 

Yanking the pot off of the hook, Hamilton spins around then throws the pot near blindly toward the door. The pot lands somewhere near Laurens’ feet, just touching what appears as his boot. Another shriek reverberates off the close, stone walls and for a second Laurens’ form completely disappears. Hamilton has but time to breathe in sharply with the surprise before Laurens reappears, closer now beside the long cooking table. Hamilton stumbles backward with his back against the brick. He looks down at the large fire grate beside him and sees the same sort of iron poker which rests beside every fireplace in the house. He picks it up and brandishes it like a sword to match Laurens’.

“Is this what you want?” Hamilton asks. “Another fight?”

He swings the poker wildly between two hands, feeling enraged and just as ridiculous. Laurens slides backward several feet, his sword at his side now.

_‘I do not fight you.’_

“Yes, you do!” Hamilton shouts, walking closer. “You scream and you crash and you terrify me, you hurt me, over and over! You break my heart!”

Hamilton swings the poker high and hard down straight through Laurens’ head and to his feet. Laurens screams and the whole apparition – the black clouds, the blood, his dirty uniform, his marred hands, his beautiful face – seems to tear in half just as the table had and he disappears.

Hamilton breathes heavily still holding the poker. He takes two hesitant steps nearer the door. He glances left and right, over his shoulder then back around. No one else waits in the dark corners of the kitchen. Hamilton walks slowly forward until he exits the kitchen back into the garden. The sun lies low enough now that long shadows crisscross the paths and shrubs. None of the shadows form a familiar shape, none say his name.

“Laurens…” Hamilton drops the poker with a clang somehow sounding louder than Laurens’ scream. “I didn’t… I was… I was angry, I did not…”

Hamilton falls to his knees on the gravel path, the bushes like cage bars around him. “Please, Laurens, I do not want revenge, I do not want to fight you.” He holds up his hands in supplication to the empty air. “I want to help you, I want… I do not want to hurt you, please, I want to help you.”

Nothing but the wind slipping through window cracks and tree branches answers his call.

Hamilton kneels beside his bed still dressed in his shirt, breeches and stockings. He clasps his hands tight together, his elbows upon the edge of the bed. When Eliza left, she mentioned prayer and Hamilton dismissed her. Now he presses his lips against his thumbs and speaks in earnest.

“Dear Lord, I know my prayers to you to be infrequent and often made in anger. You test your children, and some receive more hardships than others for reasons known only to you. I know myself as one of these men sent hardships aplenty. Perhaps it was your test to make me a better man than my birth would have allowed.” Hamilton breathes in deeply. “But I do not pray for myself or my past. I pray to you for John Laurens.”

Hamilton glances up at the canopy of the bed, his eyes toward a heaven far above what he might see with earthly eyes.

“Lord, John left this life not a year past, yet here he still remains. I do not know the nature of his spirit, if he dwells with you in one sense and in here another, or if his spirit is wholly unable now to ascend to his reward. This is beyond my knowledge as I am but a man. In either aspect, I ask you to free him from this half existence, to let him move on.”

Hamilton shifts his cramping knees and glances around the room for a sign or the vision of Laurens or something more. He sees but the dark, empty room, the fire in the grate low to embers.

“Do you do this on purpose, Lord?” Hamilton asks, his fear creeping into his voice. “Is this penance for him and I? Do you create his existence here as a specter as some sort of purgatory? Do you punish him or…” Hamilton takes a bracing breath. “Or do you punish me?” He dips his forehead onto his clasped hands. “Is this a punishment because of my actions with John against my marriage?”

Hamilton looks up again and his voice turns sharp. “If this be a punishment for me then find another way! John does not deserve this lingering, this warping of his character into this monster you make him. He was a good, honorable man and he deserves the heaven you promise!”

A gust of wind whistles through the cracks in the windows. The curtains on the right most window flutter and the embers in the fire crackle with the air so several flames reappear among the charred wood. Hamilton stares at the room trying to decide this to be a response or a rebuke, or maybe nothing at all?

“Perhaps you would say John sinned the same with his actions apart from his own wife. Perhaps you would say a punishment is deserved for us both. Need I ask forgiveness for this transgression? Should John have asked you the same?”

Hamilton unclasps his hands and lays his palms flat upon the bed. “Or would you ask me to repent, to seek forgiveness for those feelings I had – have… for those feelings I have? Should I ask forgiveness for loving him?”

Hamilton clenches his teeth. He suddenly stands up from his kneeling position, his knees screaming protest. Hamilton faces the empty room and an unresponsive God.

“If that is your request, that I repent my love for him, then I refuse. What God would give us these feelings, would make him so noble and brave, so gallant and handsome… why should you make him so worthy then call me a sinner for loving him?” Hamilton takes two steps forward and grips the bed post, his nails digging into the wood. “Why would you punish happiness that hurt no other?”

Hamilton takes several slow breathes, listening to the beat of his heart until it slows once more. “He is dead, and if we be sinners, then put that upon me. John gave his all, his life, for country and freedom. If you think us sinners for love, then instead think him a saint for that and allow him rest. Perhaps I am selfish in this request, you, Lord, knowing I ask this as a relief for my own pains and perhaps that is true. But I know this existence must pain him too and, if you are a merciful God, then give mercy to John, he has paid enough in life and after.”

Hamilton slumps down onto the bed, his hands limp in his lap. He looks up at the empty room, listening to the faint creak of the house settling, of the crackle of the single flame left upon the fire.

“Please, Lord,” Hamilton whispers. “Help me.”

Laurens’ voice whispers back, _‘The Lord helps those who help themselves.’_

Hamilton walks into his study, a drafted document in one hand and several measures from his congressional committees in the other. By the time he sits down in his chair, Laurens sits beside him.

Hamilton smiles, though the expression disappears near immediately. “I’m glad you’re here,” Hamilton says hesitantly. Laurens, though his chest bloody and his cheeks hallowed, appears quiet and still. “I have a draft and I thought… well.” He sits up straighter and pulls his chair in closer to the desk. “I could read it to you?”

Laurens tilts his head but says nothing.

Hamilton tips the paper up, clears his throat then pauses. He lets the paper fall back onto the desk. He turns his head toward Laurens. “It is my resignation.” Laurens tilts his head again. “From Congress,” Hamilton explains.

When Laurens still does not respond Hamilton turns back to the desk and the drafted letter. “I know I spoke much in our days at war about my wish to help change our country, aid in its governing.” Hamilton shakes his head. “But I do not feel as if I do that here.”

Hamilton leans back against his chair and sighs. “I feel more as though I beat my head against a wall. The men who share in the governing of our forming nation seem less to care of that for which they were appointed than their own self interests. They cannot see beyond the money and priorities of now toward a nation built and thriving.”

Hamilton turns his head to Laurens. “I try to make us a country, not simply a collection of colonies called states. I endless speak on the need for a revenue backing for our country, for debts to be paid, for our ability to show the rest of the world that we are a nation which understands the complexities of governance and can be a trusted ally or trade partner or simply a whole country.” Hamilton purses his lips. “Morris is sure to call me fickle, but it cannot be helped.”

Hamilton chuckles. He places two fingertips on the paper before him and rocks it back and forth. “I think sometimes about yourself in my place. I think your speeches would grow even more heated than my own and perhaps your resignation would have arrived far sooner.”

Laurens remains still but Hamilton briefly thinks he hears a sound like a battle cry, like the clash of swords.

“So, I am resigning. After this term I return to Albany and the law. At least the law in that sense creates change and incites action.” Hamilton turns in his chair toward Laurens, their knees close but not touching as they so often would at their aide-de-camp table. “I am choosing a different duty now. Is that what you meant when you told me choose? I should choose a duty which matters?”

Laurens’ expression changes, his lips pulling into a frown.

Hamilton leans forward. “What should you have me choose? I chose my wife, I chose life. Do you think I should choose the duty to family or nation or is it the same if I take this path?”

Laurens’ voice comes low and gravely from unmoving lips. _‘No.’_

Laurens reaches out, grabs the nearest quill on the desk, flips it around and stabs it into his neck. Black blood pours over his cravat, coating his hand.

“Stop,” Hamilton hisses.

_‘Duty leads to death.’_

“Not mine, I know you do not ask me that!”

The smell of gun smoke fills the room as blood continues to flow over Laurens, staining his coat, turning his waistcoat red. He suddenly stands in the middle of the room, blood on his palms and lips, dirt in his hair.

_‘No.’_

“What do you ask then? Do you ask me to change a choice already made in the past? I cannot do this.”

The smoke curls around them visibly now, stinging Hamilton’s eyes. A wailing noise fills the air, as though hundreds of men scream in pain.

_‘No.’_

“Why do you show me this over and over! Why do you break my heart?”

Laurens’ hair whips around him, wild and long and ragged. _‘Because you never came.’_

Hamilton breathes in deeply, forcing back the guilt and the sorrow and the horror. “I am here now, and I am asking you to rest.”

_‘You are not asking that.’_

“I am!”

Laurens smiles with blood on his teeth. _‘No.’_

Hamilton stands up, holding out his arms. “I… I don’t want you to leave, I loved you.”

_‘Loved…’_

“But this is not you!”

 _‘This is me.’_ The bullet wound on Laurens’ chest bleeds brighter, redder and his coat turns tattered, rotten. _‘Without you.’_

“You torture me!”

_‘I adored you.’_

“And now this is all I have of you,” Hamilton cries abruptly rushed and desperate. “All I have left is this horror when I had no chance to say goodbye! I was not by your side; I could not hold you. I learned of your death too late, alone, with no one to truly tell when I had not seen you in near a year and you ask me – you tell me I am wrong now? I loved – I love you and I have no solace, not in any friend, not in my wife, not even in this ghostly horror of you! I do not want you turned mad and horrible and frightening but I…” Hamilton holds up both of his hands toward Laurens imploringly. “I miss you so and I have no one to tell, no one to help, all I have is this! All I have left is your hole in my heart!”

 _‘Yes.’_ The smoke dissipates and the flow of Laurens’ blood stills. _‘You have your heart.’_

Hamilton shakes his head and shouts. “Then what do you ask, that I should cut out my heart? That I should die along side you?”

_‘Do not die, Alexander.’_

“What then? My heart must die, my love for you? Do you tell me to stop my love for you, to call us wrong and false and Eliza the only one that ever held my heart? I have tried everything; every connection I could fathom which keeps you trapped here and still you show me worse and worse to make me fear you.”

_‘It is not me you fear.’_

“I fear the loss of you,” Hamilton admits.

_‘You have not lost me.’_

A sob claws out of Hamilton’s throat. “I have… you are gone, you have died. I have lost you. This vision is all I have!”

_‘What do you think binds me here?’_

“I don’t know, if I knew I would release you!”

 _‘You know.’_ Hamilton suddenly realizes no blood mars Laurens’ clothing or pale skin. _‘You know, you simply do not want to believe.’_

Hamilton knows as he stares at Laurens, appearing near enough to real, appearing as every bit of the man Hamilton loved, of the man he clings onto. Hamilton knows for Laurens’ to move on, it is Hamilton who must move on first. 

Hamilton sits in front of the fireplace in his bedroom upstairs. Portions of his possessions sit in crates or trunks behind him as he will soon return to Albany and the rest of his life. The fire burns high now with two fresh logs and a sizeable amount of blackened wood beneath those. The fire makes the room overly hot for the spring, but Hamilton did not stoke this fire for its warmth.

Hamilton pulls back the fire grate and shifts it to one side. Then he pulls the stack of letters from behind him near the front of the fire. He pulls the ribbon which ties the stack together off. He picks up the letter on top, December of 1777, their first time apart when Hamilton lay sick, ironically, in Albany and Laurens with the army in Valley Forge.

“You begged me to regain my strength and spare your heart its own death.” Hamilton smiles then places the letter atop the fire. He pulls up the next letter, a copy in his own handwriting. “I wrote back that merely three months with you had not been enough and I was honor bound to return and kiss you for every additional day apart.”

Hamilton places the second letter atop the flames overtaking the first. He swallows back the lump in his throat as he watches the paper curl and the words inside disappear forever. He knows his memory of the exact words will fade over time but the feeling with not.

_‘I wrote back, I would give up all those kisses if it meant you well.’_

Hamilton looks up to Laurens now standing beside him. He wears his uniform, pristine coat, waistcoat and breaches, his cravat tightly tied and his boots well polished. He does not wear his sword or his hat. He also bears no bloody wound.

Hamilton nods, picking up the very letter Laurens refers to and adding it to the fire. “I read it dozens of times over from my sick bed.” He stares at the flames, the broken wax seal melting as the paper burns. “I did not have a chance to write you back after that before I returned well again to Valley Forge as you asked.”

Hamilton picks up the next letter on the pile, his hand shaking. The next letter is out of order, from 1780 when Laurens replied to a previous letter about Hamilton’s wife, Laurens’ letter full of anger and accusations and a demand for Hamilton to simply marry and ‘save me the suffering of expectation in my new solitary fate.’

“One I am less forlorn to burn,” Hamilton says quietly though his fingers still clutch the paper hard before he manages to release it into the flames.

Laurens kneels beside Hamilton as Hamilton picks up another letter. He holds this one up, checking the date. Then he smiles as his eyes shift to Laurens. “From you, 1779, when you first left for the southern campaign.” Laurens smiles softly in return, his eyes on the letter. “After I found out about your own wife and you wrote rather passionately about your desire for me and your intention to do all, both with words and hands to prove your affection lay only with me.” Hamilton sighs, turning the letter over twice in his hands. “I think you especially overly bold in our youth in what you dared to write.” He tosses the letter into the fire, unable to do so slowly lest he lose his nerve.

Hamilton swallows once more and turns back to Laurens. “This won’t make me forget you.”

Laurens nods. _‘I know.’_

“But it will make you leave?” Hamilton places his hand atop the pile. “It will… let you rest?”

_‘I have to – I’ve always needed to.’_

Hamilton cocks his head. “You know that?”

_‘It is only part of me here and I can hold back the anger for this.’_

“For what?”

_‘Goodbye.’_

“Is that… is that all? Is that the only reason you returned to me?”

 _‘You needed this too.’_ Hamilton shuts his eyes briefly, biting the edge of his lips. When he opens his eyes again Laurens’ tilts his head, his expression shifting toward a sight beyond Hamilton. _‘We hadn’t seen each other in nearly a year when I died. I died far away from you, regretting again putting so much land and war between us.’_

“It was your duty.”

_‘I chose duty too often.’_

Hamilton looks down at the stack of letters, rubbing his thumb across the worn paper. “I would have still…” He looks up at Laurens again. “It wouldn’t have changed what… Betsy and I…”

 _‘I know.’_ Laurens nods, turning his head back to Hamilton. _‘But I still could have had you, not perhaps how I wanted but longer, in some way.’_ Laurens reaches out his hand and Hamilton feels cool air brush his hair. _‘I could have chosen the harder path.’_

“Not fighting would have been the harder path?”

Laurens smiles. _‘Yes, I never had difficulty with gun and sword, it was you that frightened me.’_

“I was… I always wanted to keep you,” Hamilton says, his tongue thick in his mouth.

_‘I know, that’s why you were worth this, worth a goodbye.’_

“Did you… did you make that choice, when you died?”

_‘It doesn’t work like that.’_

Hamilton frowns. “Then how…”

_‘It is impossible to explain. I do not see you like you see me now, not like life.’_

Hamilton nods absently. “I suppose when I die, I will see.”

 _‘I hope not.’_ Laurens’ tone turns heavy. _‘I hope you never see this. I hope you move on.’_

“Like you must?” Hamilton reaches out but his hand only falls through the dulled color of Laurens’ coat. He huffs out a breath and drops his hand to the wood of the floor. “Could I not… when I first saw you, like before, maybe…”

_‘Alexander, please, just say goodbye to me now.’_

“I… I can’t... how can I…” Hamilton breathes in deeply and he feels the tears on his cheeks. He does not bother to wipe them away. “You sound like you now, like it’s really… I don’t want to lose you.”

_‘You’re not, you know that, and I can’t stay as this, I will wail and scream and turn again. I will, you can see it. I won’t be me. I’m not me now.’_

“John…”

_‘You made your decision. It is the right one. Do not fall back now.’_

Hamilton breathes out slowly and nods. “To let you move on, I must move on.”

Laurens nods. Hamilton picks up the thick stack of letters, moving toward the fire. Laurens holds up his hand. _‘You need not burn them all, it is your heart which matters most.’_

“My heart…”

_‘You are allowed your memories.’_

Hamilton chuckles, looking down at the pile. “Yes…” He sniffs and a pair of tear drops hit the top letter in his hands. “Memories of less time.”

_‘Memories of our time.’_

“You sound even more eloquent in death.”

_‘I sound like you have always heard me, as you wanted to hear me.’_

“I wanted you to be you, my brave, dashing soldier.” Hamilton looks up again. “I did not wish to change you.”

Laurens smiles. _‘I know. You had me; I was yours but not anymore.’_

“I know.” Hamilton places the remaining letters back on the floor. “I know. I have a wife and son, a life to live.”

_‘Yes.’_

“But I shall not forget you.”

_‘I know.’_

“And you… now you will…” Hamilton frowns, questions he wants to ask that he knows Laurens cannot or will not answer.

Laurens shifts closer, his hand tracing a cold line along Hamilton’s cheek. Then he pulls back, both hands on his thighs. His smile appears the full measure of happiness and sorrow at once upon his face. _‘Say goodbye to me, Alexander.’_

“I loved you – part of me still does,” Hamilton insists. “I will, I…”

_‘Yes.’_

Hamilton puts a hand against his chest. “I will always love you.”

Laurens reaches out, takes Hamilton’s hand – as if Laurens were still flesh and bone – then presses a near warm kiss to the back of Hamilton’s hand. He looks up at Hamilton with an affectionate smile, a personal smile of love and memory. _‘Then I am alive.’_

Breathes in deeply and nods once. “Goodbye, my Jack.”

Hamilton’s hand falls back onto his thigh where he now sits alone with the fire, a smaller stack of letters and the memory of a man he keeps in the past, left to rest.


End file.
